Millions of workers in Nigeria will join billions of working-class people across the world today, to mark this year’s International Workers’ Day: May Day, otherwise known as May Day. The Nigerian worker has no cause for celebration today. It has been a battle to survive amid severe economic hardship. Sharp rises in the cost of living and paltry wages have reduced the working class to poverty. Our take home pay cannot take us home. And that is for those with jobs.
The ranks of the jobless have been swelling. Poverty has been rising as a reality despite government’s tinkering with statistics with the magic portion of “rebasing” which saw unemployment figures drop from 33.3% in 2020 to 4.3% last year, on paper. Meanwhile, although President Bola Tinubu has been a darling of the international financial institutions who have hailed his anti-working people policies, even the World Bank has projected that more working-class people in the country will sink further into poverty over the next two years.
The Tinubu-led APC regime is less concerned about our fate. It is more keen on perpetuating itself, expanding the appropriation of wealth by the rich few, and repressing our class to ensure our continued exploitation by the capitalist bosses. Some people already argue that Nigeria has become a de facto one-party state. Some others see a tendency towards the emergence of a one-party state and urge activists and academics to resist this.
It is within this context that the two trade union centres, NLC and TUC chose “Reclaiming the Civic Space in the Midst of Economic Hardship” as the theme for this year’s May Day.
We must put the current situation we face in perspective and pose the question: what is to be done? Undoubtedly, the Bola Ahmed Tinubu APC government, like all previous governments (both APC and PDP), is a government of the capitalist bosses and serves this ruling class. It has not failed. While the poor have got poorer, the rich have got richer.
According to Oxfam in its report released earlier this year, under the current government’s watch: “Nigeria’s wealth gap has reached crisis levels, with the richest individuals accumulating unprecedented wealth while the poor struggle to survive.” The wealth of the super rich increased threefold between 2023 and 2024, rising by US$2 trillion, while we wallow in poverty.
We must go beyond fighting to reclaim the civic space. We must mobilise to kick out the bosses from power. Only a government of the working people will serve the interest of working people. And this cannot simply be about strategizing to win elections in 2027 on the basis of a Labour Party with no essential programmatic difference from the traditional parties of the bosses.
The problem at hand is systemic. The Nigerian ruling class, even if considered agbèrò, is still fundamentally part of the global capitalist system. This system is an international system which, like a vampire, sucks the lifeblood of working-class people by appropriating the wealth which our labour creates and the resources from the bowels of our lands.
Our struggle can thus not be limited to fighting the thieving ruling class in Nigeria. We are part of the international working class movement. We must fight to overthrow this evil system, break the chains of our exploitation and build a worldwide liberatory society on the ashes of capitalism.
The origins of May Day show how our struggle for economic benefits, such as better wages and shorter working hours, connects to the broader political struggle for revolutionary social transformation. Michael Schwabb, who was one of the organisers of the Haymarket Square demonstration on 4 May 1886, that were arrested and faced a kangaroo trial said that “today every labour movement must, of necessity be socialistic”.
That statement rings truer today than it did one hundred thirty-nine years ago. Capitalism cannot be reformed. We can defeat the bosses and gain our freedom only with struggle. Revolutionary socialist politics must be at the heart of our struggle for us to fight and win. To defeat Bola Tinubu and his APC regime, to smash capitalism and liberate ourselves from its shackles, we must dare to struggle with a far-reaching perspective that ties our immediate demands with the ultimate goal of our emancipating ourselves.
by Bà bá AYÉ
