PRESS RELEASE
NIGERIA: ECONOMIC COLLAPSE AND NATIONAL SURVIVAL UNDER PRESIDENT TINUBU
KANO, Kano State, 26 October 2024. Nigeria is in a state of deep economic and social crisis. It is in a crisis of national survival under president Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Since he assumed office, with the weakest mandate in our national political history, the president has conducted himself like an Emperor dealing with a conquered people. In his first week in office, without consultation, he declared, “subsidy is gone.” And since then petrol pump price has gone up by more than 600 percent. A litre now cost N1,200.
Arrogance of Power
The president has arrogated to himself supreme knowledge of social, economic, and security management of the country. The only actors he seem willing to listen to on the economy are foreign: The IMF and the World Bank, his “thought leaders”, according to the coordinating minister of the economy.
Not only that, the president appears more at home in France and other western capitals than he is in Abuja. He seem more adept at striking deals with foreigners than listening to Nigerian workers and toilers about their sufferings under his harsh economic policy. His usual answer to us is that, ‘I feel your pain, I know you are suffering.’ Sorry, Mr. President, you don’t.
If you did you would have visited our states to see things for yourself, instead of flying to Paris and London. You would have been to the markets and ghettos of our major cities and villages to do on the spot assessment. But we are not your priority. Your priorities are clear: Raising revenue for your government at our expense; and adding to our daily hardships and cost of living pain.
The Neoliberal Dead End
This approach to public economic management in Africa is not new. It is short term thinking that leads to long lasting hardships for our people. The short term goal is to resolve balance of payment and debt management crisis. This is done through the notorious tools perfected by the IMF: Subsidy withdrawal, devaluation, fiscal tightening, high interest rates, wage freeze, commercialisation and privatisation of public assets.
The consequences, as we have experienced since last year, have crippled domestic production, ruined small and medium businesses, propelled food inflation, raise the cost of social services, and put public education beyond low income earners.
Breakdown of Public Administration
This breakdown in public administration affects both the civil and the armed services. The police, civil defence, the department of special services, and the military are all caught up in this crisis of public service delivery- making every citizen insecure and vulnerable, as government is failing in discharging its primary law and order duties. Hence civil service is now part time work, as many workers cannot afford the weekly rounds in their offices. Therefore absenteeism is the new normal. How can this form of dilapidated administration produce development?
The Road to Sudan
This economic and social crisis have put us firmly on the road to Sudan. No exaggeration. Let us in brief recall what happened in that country:
– The government introduced an IMF type austerity measure;
– Food inflation overwhelmed the mass of the people; domestic production collapsed; imports became expensive; poverty became rampant; corruption riddled the political class.
– Citizens protested and government clamped down on them using sponsored thugs and the security forces.
– The government insisted on pursuing its harsh economic reforms, claiming there was no alternative.
– The People mobilised to fight for a better living condition.
– The regime crackdown escalated, leading to an uprising.
– The military intervened but the crisis continued.
– We all know the rest of the story: civil war. State collapse. Millions of Sudanese are now displaced people and refugees. Some are even here in Nigeria. Complex as the issue is, what we outlined here in policy terms were material features manifested in the Sudan before it descended into civil war.
This is a scenario we must do everything to avoid. But here are the worrying signs that makes this press conference necessary.
Tolerance of Ethno-Fascist Threats
As the masses continue to protest against the economic policies of the Tinubu regime across the country, arrests of peaceful protesters is growing, while fascist groups in support of the government are threatening secession, ethnic cleansing, and regional supremacy. Nothing concrete is being done to rein in on these groups, and similar thugs that attacked peaceful protesters in August and after.
Yet the arrests of Pan-Nigerian groups, especially those on the left, that are uniting the people around the struggle for their basic needs continue unabated. What is the message that the government is sending to the country with its double standards? Are we to believe that president Tinubu is more at home with fascist groups such as those led by Igboho that jetted to as far as London to invite the imperialist white man to interfere in our domestic affairs than peaceful protest organisers at home fighting for their survival needs?
Suddenly, regional groupings have proleferated. Some ostensibly pursue humanitarian agenda. Others are bent on carving out ethnic supremacist states out of Nigeria. Who is sponsoring them? Who is tolerating them? Who is financing their expensive trips abroad and across the country?
Both the president and his vice have looked the other way, pretending that nothing serious is happening on the ethno-fascist front under their watch. Their attitude is misplaced. They both need to come out openly to dissociate themselves from, and condemn, these malevolent entities disguised as socio-cultural groups.
Federal Might and State Fightback
We in the NPFM have equally observed worrying trends of persistent federal intrusions into political and customary matters that ordinarily should concern state governments. Kano and Rivers states in particular have been under negative pressures from actors believed to have strong federal backing. This sort of political misbehaviour risk undermining democratic institutions and state stability. The threats from Abuja directed at these state governments is making governance in Rivers and Kano needlessly unstable and prone to violence.
Not only that, Lagos state, a darling of the presidency, has adopted a crypto fascist approach to its dealings with the political opposition. It is flying the indigene versus the non-indigene flag of political convenience to silence all opposition. The president himself alluded to this when he said that no state government has the right to expel non indigenes from its territory.
On the other hand, in Kano state, a residual customary issue such as emirate council appointment has been capitalised upon by pro-federal actors to engineer a stalemate that has crippled emirate council administration in the state.
So too was the local government election in the state turned into a federal versus state struggle that is still unfolding and may replicate the situation in Rivers where federal statutory allocations to the state for local governments are hanging in the balance due to contrived litigations. This can only make a bad local government system desperate for development worse.
In all cases it is the invisible hand of federal might that has exacerbated the situation and destabilised the unfavoured states in order to foist an agenda on them that is favourable to the president’s party, pre-positioning it for the next general election. This pattern of behaviour risk spiralling into mindless political violence that can upset the entire fragile constitutional order.
The Real Issue: National Survival
The NPFM is urging Nigerians to beware of the manipulation of ethnic, religious and regional identities perfected by regime agents to divert us from the real threats to our daily survival that they have imposed on us through their exploitative economic policy. This remain: The high cost of petrol, electricity, interest rates, and governance; and the wide gap between the rich and the poor engineered through public policy and class exploitation.
The fact is that president Tinubu is taking Nigeria to the edge of a political and economic cliff. If this trend is not stopped via peoples power, it will be too late for the country to recover. How can anyone explain his obsession with the 1960s: Returning us back to a national anthem written for us by a white face; trying to take us back to regionalism; and a parliamentary form of government, as if these are the dire needs of the people. They are not.
The issues that the president is avoiding are: Re-nationalisation of the NNPC(L) and electricity DISCOs; and the abandonment of his primitive neoliberal Economic model for an alternative national economic transformation program that we the people can co-construct with progressive minded state policy actors.
TUC and NLC: Reject Co-optation, Embrace Workers Unity
But as the president declared on October 1, 2024, he is going to engage in a massive privatisation exercise, which informed his co-optive gestures towards the Nigeria Labout Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC). The object is to legitimise his draconian economic program and create mass buy-in among the working class for his compressed natural gas (CNG) project.
This will transition the entire public transport system from its current fuel based energy source, making the gas tycoon monopolist the sole controller of public movement in the country. How is this in the national interest?
The NPFM is calling on the working class to unite and resist the coming privatisation exercise. We must not allow the regime to consolidate its hold over what remain of our national assets. This brazen capture of state resources by a few hands is a glaring violation of Chapter 2 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).
We call on the working and toiling people to organise and resist this agenda before Nigeria is completely turned into a Mafia state, if it is not already.
Power Outage in the North
As we address you today, 17 Northern states out of 19 are in total darkness as a result of cumulative grand corruption, sabotage, and armed vandalisation of major electricity transmission lines. We had witnessed a similar blackout in the North-East about three months ago. And no decisive action was taken by the regime to prevent a repeat of this crime.
The men in power care not. Typically, they are reactive, but never proactive. They did not learn the appropriate lessons from previous vandalisation of sensitive transmission lines to the region. As there is no accountability for poor performance or criminal violence by powerful rogue actors to create billion of dollars in repairs contracts. To them it is business as usual. It is how bandit capitalism operates. That is why we were not surprised when the minister of power had the audacity to promise us that there will be light in two weeks time. Incredible! What are we supposed to do before then? No alternative. Same like the president’s economic policy. No alternative.
Why should we keep quiet in the face of such acute national emergency? Why should we not resist a regime that can be so callous and careless with the lives and livelihoods of over 130 million people? To stay mum in these circumstances is to partake in our own subjugation. We hope no one is contemplating the privatisation of the electricity transmission company of Nigeria? If so, we will stop it by any legitimate means at our disposal. Buyer beware.
And we call for an independent investigation of all contracts awarded in the power sector from 1999 to the present. This will reveal the real vested interests that have crippled the power sector, to which the incessant terrorist attacks on the transmission lines is an added criminality. Let us know the firms that will fix the damaged transmission lines in two weeks time and how much they are paid. We want full disclosure.
Land and Mineral Resource Grab for Capital
Already, powerful politicians, land speculators, and big business interests are mapping out mineral zones and fertile lands across the country for what will amount to internal colonisation. Mineral rich areas of states such as Bauchi, Kogi, Nassarawa, Niger, and Zamfara have become prime targets for privatisation, with more and more villagers being displaced under the pretext of protecting public interest.
But the reality, as we all know, is that peasant lands are being grabbed for private gain. This rent seeking land grab on a grand scale across the mineral and agro-rich areas of the country is already triggering peasant protests in the north, a phenomenon that is likely to escalate into uncontrollable violence in due course.
Niger Delta: The state abuse of oil wells, pipeline management contracts, gas flaring, and artisanal petroleum activities in the Niger Delta is already well known. What is emerging now are the massive intrusions of political oil and gas merchants pushing for all manner of privatisations in the oil and gas sector without taking community interests into consideration. It is as if the oil and gas rich communities do no exist. Privatisation, we must emphasise, is not resource control, it is not community ownership, it is resource colonisation by rich families. It has nothing to do with public interest. It is private interest and private property. Same with the interest of Shell, Agip, and the rest.
Conference of Patriots and Left Unity
The NPFM is therefore using this opportunity to invite Nigerian patriots, especially those on the left, to a November 2024 national conference on the ‘Survival of Nigeria under bandit capitalism’. The sub-themes, date, and venue of the conference will be disclosed later. It is high time that we organise and raise the stakes of the struggle of the people for a future without bandit capitalists in charge of our lives. That future is possible if we push for social transformation in unity for the common good. Only determined and committed patriots can fulfill this mission for development, freedom and social justice in Nigeria.
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Signed:
Comrade Abdulmajid Yakubu Daudu,
Chairman, NPFM
For: The Nigeria Pstriotic Front Movement Secretariat
Contact Gsm:
08067512196; 08029411900
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