Showing posts with label Those Who Killed (And Are Killing) Nigeria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Those Who Killed (And Are Killing) Nigeria. Show all posts

Friday, September 23, 2016

Those Who Killed (And Are Killing) Nigeria

By Dan Amor
Every real nation state is an historical product. It is, in Marx's celebrated phrase, "the official resume of the antagonism in civil society", but under historically determinate circumstances. As such, it is the product of the historically specific constellation of class relations and social conflicts in which it is implicated. It may, therefore, indeed, it must, if it is not to rest on its monopoly of the means of coercion alone, incorporate within its own structure, the interests not only of the dominant but of the subordinate classes. In this quite specific sense, then, every real nation state has an inherently relative independence, including, as well, the independence to understand the dynamics of its made-made domestic crises. In consequence, therefore, the general characteristics of the Nigerian nation state today may be seen in terms of the enormity of its domestic crises and social contradictions. 

Therefore, those who murdered Nigeria, and are still killing its residues include, but not limited to: a big and comprador bourgeoisie that has abdicated its political aspirations and allied itself to semi-feudal interests; a discontented small and medium bourgeoisie made up of a certain class of professionals and intellectuals, potentially revolutionary, but which hesitates to renew the struggle for its national liberation. There is a sleeping working class which is supposed to be the prime revolutionary force but which cannot define clearly its trade union tasks and political aims. There is a large crowd of youths, the student body that constitute about 60 per cent of the national population, which has abdicated its responsibility of serving as light to the national ideal due largely to intellectual dishonesty, ignorance or docility arising from poverty of ideas. There is also, a peasant mass of small landless factory hands, artisans and motorcycle operators otherwise known as "Okada riders", who need a clear vision of their tasks and a framework within which to organize their own action in unity with the working class. Above all, a group of shameless, opportunistic and sadistic Generals (retired and serving), domestic tyrants and usurpers who, because of their prolonged crime against the people of this country, do not want political power to shift to its rightful owners for fear of being probed. And, of course, a handful of totalitarian Devils called traditional rulers who, having been aware of their gross irrelevance in a democratic society, strive to ally themselves with dictators, expired warlords and anti-democratic elements in power in order to entrench feudal power in the local government councils.

It is in this context that we must examine critically the way forward to the present logjam in the country. It would be recalled that the deepening crises that resulted in the Nigerian Civil War were the aftermath of the cumulative anger of the forces of real change against the reactionary superstructure that was the First Republic. After the bloody civil war, and thanks to the oil boom which provided them with the rare opportunity to line their pockets, the military rulers in collaboration with the agrarian mercantile big bourgeoisie, together with a small sector connected with industry, tied their future more and more to the semi-feudal structure inherited from the colonial system. Because of their quantitative and qualitative weaknesses and the fear of the workers' movement and the surge of the masses, they were, at the beginning, disposed to ally themselves with whatever was acceptable of foreign monopolist capital, then in the process of conversion to a neo-colonialist framework.