Clarifications and re-statements
By
Edwin Madunagu
My
last article, “Further notes to the Nigerian Left” (late February
2021), was a deliberately condensed message. It was so because I
feared that Nigeria was approaching another dangerous bend in its
history. I therefore wanted to indicate, even for my own
self-assurance, where the movement could stand and all that it could
do and should do if it was forced to maturity. For, I have, for some
time now, been convinced that the Nigerian Left will, one day, be
pushed to maturity because Nigeria’s ruling class, as we see it
today, cannot lead the country out of this national crisis. Now that
history appears to have granted another temporary reprieve to these
rulers, I may seize the opportunity to clarify parts of what I said
in that my urgent call to the Nigerian Left.
The
present article is therefore for clarifications and re-statements as
premised above, and will be presented in three segments. The first
segment will be a clarification of the last proposition in the
article cited above. The second segment is a report on a private
discussion I recently had with a comrade on a current issue in the
politics of our country. And the third is a report on a message I
sent to a recent political summit meeting of the Nigerian Left.
The
last paragraph of “Further notes to the Nigerian Left” goes like
this: “In conclusion, I propose that to halt this national
turbulence and violence, reverse the decline to catastrophe and calm
the nation, any serious, sincere, democratic and genuinely patriotic
government may not, in the first instance, need to look beyond the
current Constitution, the Laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,
and reports of Nigerian state-appointed Commissions of Inquiry and
Constitutional Conferences since 1999, that is, since the beginning
of the current Fourth Republic”.
This
proposition was both an indictment of Nigeria’s ruling class, its
state and its government and a revolutionary proposition to the
Nigerian Left. But, that it was, and is, an indictment of the
current rulers is clear enough. What may not be clear, or clear
enough is how it is a revolutionary proposition to the Nigerian
Left. My explanation is as follows: Every epoch, every generation of
humanity makes its own history; but it makes history not in
circumstances chosen by it. Every generation makes history in
circumstances transmitted from the past. So said Karl Marx in his
analyses of one of the revolutionary convulsions of 19th
century France. Our simple reading of Marx’s proposition today is
that if you wait to be able to choose all the favourable conditions
in which to make a revolutionary intervention, then you will never
make a revolution – where “revolution” is given its real,
non-mystical meaning of a sudden, fundamental but not necessarily
violent change.
With
particular reference to Nigeria and the Nigerian Left of this
generation, two of the favourable conditions for a revolutionary
intervention are the availability of a widely known and accepted
People’s Manifesto and a prior mobilization of not only a large
national cross-section of the working, toiling and poor masses, but
also fragments of middle and even upper classes. A concrete
restatement of my February proposition is that even in the absence
of these two conditions, an effective intervention can be made,
using a selection of documents from the political and legal arsenal
of Nigeria’s ruling class and its state.
This
proposition, namely, that creative deployments and applications of
extant state documents can be made to satisfy urgent popular needs,
“in the first instance”(that is, in the first stages of a
revolutionary, but popular intervention) has been implicitly
demonstrated by the late Comrade Eskor Toyo and several public
intellectuals of the Left (past and present). And from a different
ideological and political perspective, Professor Wole Soyinka is
essentially making this type of proposal when he talks of engaging
the present Constitution but “stretching” some of its provisions “to
their limits”. That is revolutionary politics, a science and an art
of which the Left should become “past masters”.
As I
was planning these “clarifications and re-statements”, I received a
post through the internet. The message embodied a proposed
geopolitical restructuring of Nigeria. In it the author or authors
proposed a restructuring of the country into 42 states from the
present 36. The number of geopolitical zones was to remain six with
their names unchanged; the zones were to have equal number of
states, that is, seven each; Abuja was to become a state or have
part of it transformed into a state; the states, and not the
geopolitical zones, will remain the federating units. Finally,
“fiscal federalism” and “resource control” were to be progressively
implemented, up to the desirable limit, over a period of 35 years!
After reading this intriguing “memorandum” that seems to be
deliberately targeted at liberal politicians, I contacted and asked
a comrade if he had seen it and if he knew the source. He said he
had seen it but, like me, he did not know the author or authors. I
then asked for his provisional views on the “memorandum”. He
summarily dismissed it, insisting that he was only interested in a
restructuring that would favour the poor, such as, “for starters, a
minimum wage of N100,000, free primary health and education for
all”. Since it was an internet discussion, it was easy for me to end
the dialogue there – to avoid any unnecessary quarrel. Why? Let me
explain.
The
response given by my comrade is correct, very correct in an
ideological skirmish with an opponent. But I will endorse it in a
serious political combat only if it is an introduction, and not the
totality of his reaction to the “memorandum” before us. My hard
reaction to the comrade’s reaction to the “memorandum” would be that
any Leftist who responds that way and stops there, without
commenting directly on the content of the memorandum, but rather
dismisses it summarily, cannot be serious about revolution, cannot
be serious about electoral politics and may not be an effective
classroom teacher.
Of
the several reasons for my reaction, I may pick out only one: Large
segments of the same working, toiling and poor masses of Nigeria in
whose name and on whose behalf we speak are today – for no fault of
theirs - interested not only in enhanced “minimum wage”, “free
health” and “education for all” but also in “restructuring” and
kindred political and governance issues. The task of the Nigerian
Left and Nigerian Leftists is to combine the two sets of interests
in a revolutionary manner – while emphasizing the strategic line of
march! This point is further developed in the following, and final
segment of this piece.
Quite recently, I received an invitation to a political summit of
the Nigerian Left. As I could not participate in person, I sent in a
message in which I proposed three alternative political strategies:
“Either we embark on a strategy of assisting or allying with the
ruling class to reconstitute and restructure itself ideologically
and politically to be able to halt the national crisis; or we pose
an alternative, but clear, concrete, responsible and bold
popular-democratic programme of self-liberation, redemption and
reconstruction to the working and toiling masses of Nigeria; or we
seek a middle-course between these two strategies.”
I
told the summit that I did not intend to sound alarmist, “when I say
that time cannot perpetually be on the side of the Nigerian Left.
But the lesson of history is that if you perpetually fail or refuse
to seriously engage a problem to which you are seen, or you loudly
and sometimes noisily claim to have a solution, you risk becoming
part of the problem. And the latter will start seeking or attracting
other solutions which may sound similar but are dangerously
undesirable.” That was essentially the end of my message. And it may
also serve as the closing proposition of this piece – except that I
would now like to change the phrase “sound similar” in the second to
the last sentence to “appear attractive”. What I am trying to
communicate here is the danger of emergence of radical-sounding
groups or tendencies that are fascist in character and
counter-revolutionary in essence.
Madunagu, mathematician and journalist, writes from Calabar, Cross
River State.
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