About the middle of 1985, the
tendency to which I belonged in Nigeria’s Marxist Left met somewhere on the
campus of the former University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile
Ife.
We met to review our programme
and, in particular, to discuss what I may now articulate as “abstractionism” in
the national platforms of the Nigerian Left. And what do I mean by
“abstractionism”, a term in which, I fear, I may now have embedded unrelated
“attributes”? Let me recall the dramatic procedure used by the comrade who
introduced the subject.
The comrade produced a current
draft programme in the Nigerian Left and asked the presiding comrade to
substitute Kenya or Ghana or Cameroon for Nigeria everywhere the latter
appeared in the document. The presiding comrade chose Kenya, and we spent some
time doing the substitution. To cut this long introductory story short, the
“new” programme obtained after the simple substitution of the word Kenya for
the word Nigeria could pass for a good, even brilliant programme for the Kenyan
Left. In other words, there was almost nothing specific to Nigeria in the original
programme meant for Nigeria!
After this “warm-up” exercise,
we next tried to convince ourselves, first: that this practice of writing
abstract, non-“nation specific” or “supra-nation” programmes and manifestoes of
struggle against capitalism, imperialism and dictatorship and for workers’
power, popular democracy and socialism was widespread in the Nigerian Left; and
secondly: that our tendency was not guilty of the error—having, in practice,
abandoned it a decade earlier in the locality where we were holding that
meeting. What followed was, of course, the imperative: to decide and prepare to
wage a struggle against the practice described above, the practice I now call
“abstractionism.”
One particular element of this
envisaged struggle against “abstractionism” was the writing of a book to be
titled “The (Un) Making of Nigeria” (or, in full, “The making and unmaking of
Nigeria”). It was to be a stage-by-stage account, a critical and self-critical
account of what had been a continuous historical process: the simultaneous
building and wrecking of Nigeria and the social forces responsible for the
building and those responsible for the wrecking of the nation. This would be
followed, of course, by how the “building struggle” would continue more concretely.
For several reasons, this writing project did not come out the way we planned
it. Instead of a single comprehensive group publication, what we had were
single-author internal memos, articles, collections of essays and monographs.
It was not that organisations
and tendencies of the Nigerian Left were not connected with the masses or the
grassroots. No, they were well connected with and active in the ranks of
workers, peasants, women, students, academics, professionals and other strata
of the popular masses. But their “connections” and “activities” were either
entirely local or—where they were not entirely local and attempted to be
regional or national—were fragmented and uncoordinated. Beyond this—and this is
the core of the matter-at the national political level, or on the question of
state power, what they did, said and wrote did not indicate that revolution or
the capture of state power in Nigeria—by whatever means, electoral or
nonelectoral—was, for them, a realizable political project, in the foreseeable
future—assuming that such a political project was even considered desirable. It
was as if the Nigerian Left was, at best, a self-limiting protest movement.
The preceding statement is a
strong one, deliberately made so because “abstractionism” is still alive in the
Nigerian Left. Were the Nigerian Left not “abstract”, as defined above, were it
to consider revolution or the capture of state power as a desirable and
realizable political project, it would not summarily dismiss concrete and
significant political questions raised by political forces outside or within
the Left. And it would not shy away from raising concrete political questions
of its own and putting them on the agenda of national political discourse,
debate or struggle.
For the avoidance of doubt, by
concrete and significant national political questions here I mean questions
directly related to the issue of political power, the capture of state power—and
not simply those permanent economic, class and popular-democratic struggles
(like struggles over wages, employment, prices, human rights, state abuse,
social welfare, security, etc.) that the Left must permanently wage to be able
to recognize and define itself as Left and be so defined and recognized by its
primary constituencies and the nation. Current national political questions
would include what is now known as “restructuring”. Related to it, and perhaps historically
issuing from the same campaign, was the call for a “national conference” and
later “sovereign national conference” or SNC.
What is at present embarrassing
to me, as a not-too-young member of the Nigerian Left, is that several Leftists
now make it sound as if “restructuring” and “sovereign national conference”
were autonomous formulations from the Nigerian Right. Of course, not. For the
origins of these two campaigns, I invite interested persons to research the
print media of the early 1990s. Such persons will discover the role played by
the Nigerian Left in formulating the campaigns and giving them revolutionary
and popular-democratic contents and forms.
Recently, I re-organised my
current position on “restructuring” around five “clusters” of ideas. I shall
conclude this piece with an outline of the “clusters”. The first “cluster” of
ideas I called “the impossibility of (pure) ethnic separation in Nigeria”. By
this I mean that Nigeria cannot break or separate, peacefully or violently,
along pure ethnic lines or even along near-pure ethnic lines. And by “pure ethnic
lines” I mean without creating new entities with significant majority/minority
dichotomies.
The second “cluster” of ideas,
“relates to class-to-class redeployment and redistribution of national
resources or, simply, the restructuring of class appropriations. By this I mean
the massive movement of resources from the ruling class and blocs to the
popular masses through people-oriented radical reforms in employment,
education, health, housing, transportation, …” and the lifting of several
layers of existential burden from the shoulders of the “common people.”
The third “cluster” is
essentially the strengthening of the present six geopolitical zones and the
creation of a presidential council of six equal members, each member
representing a geopolitical zone. The headship and vice-headship of the council
will be rotational within a 4-year presidential tenure. Put differently:
Instead of the present office of the president, there shall be the presidential
council of six equal members. The tenure of the council is 4 years; and each
member will head the council for 8 months. The vice-headship will also be for 8
months. In this way, in a presidential tenure of 4 years, a council member
would have acted as head for 8 months and as vice-head for 8 months.
The fourth cluster of ideas is
the creation of a level of governance below the present local government
council. This I call the “community” or the “neighbourhood” In the fifth and
final cluster of ideas: Nigeria will remain a federal republic; the current
principles of citizenship, fundamental human rights and principles of state
policy will be enhanced; the Federal Government will give up a substantial
fraction of its current appropriation to the states and local governments. The
states, in turn, will finance the zones and the local governments will finance
the communities.
Each of these five “clusters”
can be argued and defended by the Nigeria Left on historical, political and
ideological grounds. Defended: not just in conclaves, but crucially before the
popular masses and the nation. And taken together, the five “clusters”
represent a concrete revolutionary platform on the single question of
“restructuring.” That platform I have called “popular-democratic restructuring”
or “restructuring under popular democracy.”
*Contributed by Edwin Madunagu, mathematician and
journalist, writes from Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria.
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