May Day takes place this year as the organic crisis of capitalism in this era deepens in Nigeria and across the world. From the war on Gaza, to a conflagration in the Middle East as the United States and Israel turn up the heat on Iran. The facade of the so-called multilateral rules-based system, which its pretences at fostering sovereignty and harmonious co-existence between states, has shattered. The world watched as Donald Trump abducted a sitting president in Venezuela. The West only screamed blue murder when he threatened to annex Greenland.
Insecurity has become normalised in Nigeria. Despite empty promises that the federal government keeps making, kidnapping, murder and brutalisation of poor working people continues unabated across the country. The Plateau has remained a terribly painful killing field. Bandits flaunt millions of naira, being ransom from families of people they kidnapped, on social media. s
Working-class people have borne the burden of the turmoil which the world has been thrown into. The excruciating rise in the cost of living, which has made life increasingly more challenging for working-class people across the world since the COVID-19 pandemic, has got even worse. The war in the Middle East has resulted in sharp spikes in fuel prices. This has had a multiplier effect on the prices of commodities.
In Nigeria, living has become hell on earth. It is a miracle that working people survive on their meagre income. The number of people living below the poverty line keeps increasing. 113 million people lived in poverty in Nigeria when Bola Tinubu became president. It is now at least 140 million people. Nigeria has the largest number of homeless people in the world, while there are several unhoused buildings in major cities. There are 25 million poor people living under bridges, besides rail lines or in the most ramshackle of shanties built of cardboard and such like, in our cities and towns.
Right-wing forces have jumped into the fray with narratives and politics that provide false solutions and divide our ranks. In the West, we have seen the consolidation of the influence of anti-immigrant and racist forces on the streets and in parliaments. Ethnic-based solutions such as secession have gained traction in Nigeria. Xenophobia is spreading like wildfire in countries like South Africa.
Religion has become ever more a source of succour for many in the heart of a heartless world. Reactionary and reformist social media influencers alike sell all sorts of snake oil remedies for the social, economic and political crisis. And capitalist politicians keep coming up with promises that they never intend to keep.
However, working-class people are not taking the situation laying low. Our class has been fighting. Strikes, mass protests, and demonstrations have rocked the country and countries across the world. But our clarity informs the extent to which our struggles can lead to an understanding of the current situation and what is to be done.
The wars, worsening living standards of working-class people, climate crisis and social dislocation we are witnessing are not merely episodic instances of the current epoch. They are interconnected and possess a systemic nature, which is rooted in the logic of capitalism.
There are 3,428 billionaires in the world today. Collectively they own $20.1 trillion. There were just 793 billionaires in 2006, before the great financial crisis. And their collective worth was $2.6 trillion. This was just over 10% of the wealth of today’s billionaires! Meanwhile, 3.5 billion working-class people live in abject poverty and just between $300 billion and $400 billion per annum is needed to end poverty worldwide.
There are four billionaires in dollars in Nigeria today. Collectively, they own $46 billion. The wealth of just three of them is more than the wealth of over 83 million working-class people in the country, and can end poverty in the country. Meanwhile, recall that in 2006, no Nigerian dollar billionaire existed. Not even Dangote! So, as things are getting more terrible for the vast majority of the population, a few rich capitalist people have been getting stupendously richer.
The secret of the wealth of the capitalist class lies in our poverty. As the NLC motto says: labour creates wealth. The billionaires will not simply hand over the money to end poverty. States and their governments serve the interests of capital and will safeguard the interests of the rich, the capitalist class, over and above our interests as working-class people, and the wellness of planet health.
We must resist their attacks on us. We must defend the gains we have won through struggle in earlier epochs. And we must do even more. We must turn our defence into a counter-offensive. We must unite and fight to break the oppressive shackles of the system that exploits us and the class that personifies it.
We must draw inspiration from the martyrs of the Haymarket Square event of 1886 that birthed May Day as International Workers Day. We must organise and build our power as workers, to fight for workers’ democracy and forge a socialist future from the ashes of capitalism.
History now presents no middle ground. Gone are the days when the choice was between socialism and barbarism. We are living in an age of barbarism already. The final ruins of capitalism will mark our collective destruction as a species if this blood-sucking system is not overthrown.
The revolutionary task of bringing to birth a new world from the ashes of the old falls on the back of our class, the working class. As we further learn from the Solidarity Forever song: in our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, greater than the might of armies magnified a thousandfold. More than ever before, we must dare to struggle, to dare to win our liberation and the building of a better world.
by Bàbá AYÉ
