Radical and revolutionary youths in the country, particularly Millennials and GenZ are finding it increasingly difficult to trust and work with the trade union movement on the new wave of popular struggle in the country. As a youth myself, I have noticed this in several conversations, and arguments on several social media platforms in recent times.
There is an expectation of more radical strategies on the part of the trade union movement to inspire and lead a workers’ revolt against a government that has in less than one year implemented what is arguably most severe anti people’s policies than any other government since 1999. The audacity with which the current regime dishes out these policies raise the angst of the emerging left that more than ever before, Labour movement should match all out in the same manner the civil societies of the left has done with the #WeAreHungry and #EndBadGovernance protests. Rather, the Labour has chosen to adopt press statement that are clearly stating their non-involvement in the organising yet pledging their support to the right of Nigerians to ‘peacefully’ protest against their displeasures.
The magnitude of the #EndBadGovernance by the third day had raised the expectations that it was time for the Labour bureaucrats to swing into action and declare a total solidarity with the people on the street across Nigeria. Without being affirmative, the labour bureaucrats obviously feel the labour centres cannot be drawn into a mass action it ‘knew’ nothing about. Hence, an expectation that it must be consulted formerly for such intervention to come. There is a counter moral question these young radical generations ask on whether Labour needs a formal invitation to be in a struggle of the people-the workers.
Even if consulted, I doubt if the institutional framework in Nigeria would have allowed the Labour to declare an official solidarity. The praxis of course, leaves a choice to Labour to consult its organs widely and one could be so sure that the majority of the congresses would say a loud YES to protest. After all we were all human with inalienable rights to protest before being workers. This forms the displeasure of some of us towards the Labour leaders. With just a press statement of Labour cautioning the government from repressing the masses who were protesting peacefully, Tinubu’s government would declare NLC President a suspect against the state, order an illegal raid of the Labour secretariat, clampdown on its voices and every other method of silencing known.
What lesson I think we should draw from this is that we cannot continue to fight against same issues but separately. It is in my presumption that Tinubu and his cronies in power are smart enough to know that the NLC was not actively involved in mobilising for these protests. Declaring NLC President a suspect and raiding the Labour house are just special tactics of intimidating the Nigerian Labour from conceiving the idea of joining a potential mass protest that is likely to mark the country’s independence anniversary in October. This is the very reason the Nigerian Labour must throw itself strategically into the struggle of the people. Otherwise, the repression the government is bringing to its doorstep would persist. If there is anything, history has taught us that no repressive government simply change by its own volition but can only be compelled by the resistance of the people.
The understanding that the young radicals of my generations must have is that trade unions do not and, cannot operate like civil society organisations. Nor can they organise with the same strategy as new social movements. Of course, the latter is a debate among labour scholars. But what is beyond any argument is that trade unions are basically reformist mass organisations of workers for the defence of their economic interests. We should learn to be humble enough to appreciate both the strength and the limitations of trade unions. A sharp analysis of the subjective factor would give us a better understanding. That we cannot fight on behalf of the people nor arrogantly dismiss the potent power of trade unions as workers’ vanguard in their own right. We can only appreciate it if well utilised.
This is not to excuse the trade unions from doing as much as they can and should. It is in the expectation that a better approach would helps us foster solidarity,e even when we disagree and criticise. And we must not be too impatient and call for the abandonment of the trade unions as many young revolutionaries have argued. This “ argument reduces itself in reality to giving up the actual struggle to win the masses” to our side. Above all, we must learn to appreciate all of these circumstances and find a method of working with the trade unions, particularly at their shop-floor or grassroots level.
by Lekan Abdulazeez SONEYE
