Revolutionary pressures in Nigeria (1)

August 17, 2019

The title of this piece is evidently not original. It is an adaptation of the title the characteristically profound yet highly controversial book, ‘Revolutionary Pressures in Africa’ published in 1978 by the immortal preeminent political economist, Professor Claude Ake. The reason for my referring to this book in this column today is pretty obvious. Former radical students’ union leader, media entrepreneur turned politician and now convener of the #RevolutionNow protests, Omoyele Sowore, has made revolution, a popular buzzword in Nigeria once again.

Of course, the state has responded in a predictably high handed manner to what may have most likely ended up as nothing but a futile exercise in unproductive political masturbation. For, as respected columnist, Professor Ayo Olukotun put it in his column of Friday, August 9, in The Punch, “You cannot have a revolution without a revolutionary agenda, revolutionary personality, a vanguard, a rearguard and minimal capacity to enforce the revolutionary script”. By obtaining a court order to detain him for 45 days, in the first instance, the Nigerian state has simply lionized Sowore needlessly.  It has demonstrated a nervousness that only a fragile and insecure state should exhibit when confronted with a political pygmy like Sowore.

What Ake refers to as ‘revolutionary pressures’ have existed in Nigeria ever since I became politically conscious as a youth. Yet, we have never succeeded in creating a cadre of revolutionaries to take effective and maximum advantage of such situations to successfully mobilize the masses to overthrow an indisputably unjust, exploitative and inequitable socio-economic and political system. At best we have had ultimately ineffectual mass protests, military coups that produced largely reactionary, repressive and regressive regimes or elections in which people mostly vote without choosing (apologies once again to Claude Ake) and elected governments come to power promising fundamental change that forever remain elusive.

Explicating on Ake’s theorization of ‘revolutionary pressures’, a reviewer, Lawal Abdulmutha, posits that “In accounting for the instability of present-day African political systems, Professor Claude Ake argues that there are revolutionary pressures against the existing exploitative class relations, and thus against the very survival of the ruling elite and the state. He attributes these pressures to, first, the desperate poverty of African workers; second, the huge economic and social discrepancy between rich and poor; third, rising expectations due to modernization; fourth, the enticing models provided by the developed countries made even more piquant by their portrayals in the media and by the limited penetration of consumer goods and retail firms into African markets; and fifth, the politicization of the African peoples through their frustrating colonial and post-colonial experiences”.

The late renowned development economist, Dudley Seers, famously noted in the 60s that the three most critical questions to ask in order to ascertain whether or not a country was developing are: ‘What is happening to poverty? What is happening to inequality? What is happening to unemployment?’ These three indices have undeniably worsened over the last two decades indicating that we are yet to begin to perceive and utilize democracy as a handmaiden of development. Despite President Muhammadu Buhari’s best efforts and personal example of modesty and rectitude, the country remains trapped in a huge corruption cesspit that continues to inhibit the possibility of extricating the vast majority of our people from dehumanizing poverty.

Another economist, Edgar Owens, contends that development takes place when there is development of people and liberation of the human potential rather than the development of things. What have we seen in most cases over the last two decades of unbroken democracy? There is an overconcentration on huge infrastructural projects in urban centers mostly for their exhibitionist value as well aspresumably a source of fantastic kickbacks from overinflated contract awards by a larcenous political class. Again, the democratic process itself – the humongous cost of organizing and managing elections or the no less outrageous cost of maintaining elected and appointive public officers – diverts resources from meeting the pressing existential needs of the vast majority of the people including providing potable water, solving the power supply conundrum, undertaking meaningful rural development, eliminating avoidable diseases, providing effective, affordable and qualitative healthcare and educational services among others.

In calling for his #RevolutionNow campaign, Sowore is, therefore, right that the inexcusable level of poverty in Nigeria today is unacceptable against the background of the country’s abundant resources and the obscene profligacy of a minuscule proportion of the population. But then, does Sowore not contradict himself logically and philosophically? In contesting the last presidential election, was he not expressing his faith and confidence in the extant system? Was not that an election in which the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) lost no less than five states to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)? Is an election credible only when you or your party wins? If Sowore had been declared winner of the election, would his government have magically solved all the country’s problems instantaneously? Would he then have initiated a #RevolutionNow campaign against his own government or tolerated others launching such a campaign?

Beyond this, Sowore and his collaborators seems oblivious of the fact that Nigeria is already caught in the midst of an ever deepening revolution of the country’s teeming and suffering masses of the underclass even if the latter have never heard of nor have any idea what the word revolution means? How else can you describe the mindless descent into ever worsening anarchy across the country on a daily basis? I have seen with my own eyes youths with blood shot eyes banging with dangerous weapons on the windows of cars caught in traffic and forcibly dispossessing occupants of such vehicles of their money and possessions. Is that not a revolt of the underclass even when they lack any class consciousness in any meaningful sense of the word?

What do you make of the senseless banditry, terrorism, religious extremism, rape, kidnapping, cultism, communal clashes or even mindless drug use by an alarmingly increasing number of youths? These are forms of revolt and rejection, even if self-destructive, against an exploitative, casino capitalist system that has totally alienated the vast majority of the citizenry and ripped them of their basic humanity and dignity. And here lies the signal failing of the likes of ideologically conscious individuals like Sowore and radical groups like the trade unions, progressive academics and change-oriented civil society groups that have abandoned the more important but back-breaking task of political education, enlightenment and mobilization of the masses of the people to effect radical political change.

A vacuum has thus been created that has been filled by ethnic entrepreneurs, religious buccaneers and anarchic separatists who consciously divide the people in order to continue to exploit them. Sowore and other young and vibrant presidential candidates in the last election contested on the platforms of parties that had no firm pan-Nigerian foundations or even easily comprehensible and widely disseminated programs capable of appealing to the electorate. Party formation, consolidation and mass mobilization are no tea party.

What then is to be done? Old style bloody revolutions that sought wholesale overthrow of extant state structures and the emergence of an ultimately elusive radically new order is not the way to go. History teaches us that such revolutions not only eventually consume their own children, they easily degenerate into even worse monsters than the systems they overthrew. Unlike countries like Libya, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia or Algeria which had to undergo the so-called Spring Revolutions to break the bonds of dictatorship but only fell into greater political crisis, Nigeria has a democratic system that, despite its flaws, has lasted 20 years without any interregnum.

It makes no sense to seek to discard the system wholesale at this stage.   With all its faults, democracy has built into it a self-correcting mechanism. The cure for the lapses of democracy is continuous practice of more democracy. It is not the perhaps well-meaning but ill-conceived, poorly thought out and immaturely organized #RevolutionNow sought to be convened by Sowore in a complex and plural polity like Nigeria, which he does not appear to have studied seriously.

In his review of Ake’s ‘Revolutionary Pressures’, Lawal Abdulmuttah, writes: “Ake notes that the African people are essentially demanding two things. The first is equality, which, in effect, means the abolition of post-colonial capitalism and its privileged classes. The second is “social well-being, easing the agony of extreme want”. Ake, however, postulates that neither of these demands will be granted by African ruling elites because the very condition of underdevelopment very drastically limits the expansion of the economic surplus. Thus, the capitalists cannot react favourably to revolutionary pressures without committing class suicide, which, of course, they will not do”.

Here, I do not entirely agree with Ake. Unable to resist the persistent and vehement demands of Nigeria’s middle and underprivileged classes for a welfare state in order to democratize the benefits of Nigeria’s oil wealth, the Nigerian ruling class had no choice but to include a chapter on the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy in the 1979 constitution and this has been retained in the 1999 constitution. Although this section that provides for far-reaching welfare services to succor the poor and vulnerable was defanged by being made non-justiciable, human rights lawyer and activist, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), has demonstrated how this section can indeed be a basis for a revolutionary redistribution of wealth in Nigeria in his seminal book, ‘Nigerian Law on Socio-Economic Rights’, which we will re-examine in the final part of this piece next week.

But let us give the final word, once again, to Professor Ayo Olukotun who warns that, “What the Sowore outburst has to teach us, in case we are a nation that learns, is that time may be running out for the ruling class, to make desirable changes, and to walk the talk by rescuing Nigerians out of the bind in which they find themselves”.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to our Newsletter

* indicates required

Intuit Mailchimp