Storm Clouds Hover About the Tinubu Administration

Statement of the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard (RSV), Nigerian Section of the RCIT, 17.02.2024. https://www.communism4africa.wordpress.com

The masses may soon take the Tinubu administration by storm. Spontaneous outbreaks of protest is now a daily occurrence in this or that part of Nigeria in response to the callous laissez-faire policy that has intensified the impoverishment of the people. From its very inception at the inauguration the administration had imposed audacious austerity policies against the working masses and oppressed, starting with the abrupt end of subsidy on Petroleum products with a curt announcement that “subsidy is gone”. Then followed the flagrant floating of the naira predicated on the ludicrous excuse that local money changers were the main cause for the loss in the value of the naira, thus the naira must be further devalued.

Before Nigerians could recover from this double-malady the Student Loan Act was promulgated with the most inane conditions to be fulfilled before any eligible student can obtain the loan. The whole scheme has now been clearly seen as a ploy to hike fees in tertiary institutions since more tertiary institutions and colleges of higher learning are still increasing their school and accommodation fees. Then there’s the increase in value added taxes for Automotive Gas Oil (like diesel) and other petroleum products. The rounds of economic terrorism from the Tinubu administration in less than a year of its existence are countless.

All these have led to unprecedented hardship for the people. The combination of these inimical attacks on the masses has led food prices to sky-rocket; medicine prices to quadruple and fuel prices to jump on a quarterly bases. At present residents of parts of major cities like Lagos face long winding queues to get fuel even at the exorbitant rates of over 600 naira/litre. A bag of rice formally 28,000 naira at the beginning of Tinubu’s administration now goes for 77,000-80,000 naira. A measure of Garri, a staple food made out of cassava, which sold for 366.99 naira in May 2023 now sells at over 1000 naira while the same measure of kidney beans now goes for 1200 naira from 685 naira. One does not have to be an expert dietician/nutritionist to predict how lacking of essential nutrients will be the meals of a whole generation of children because if grains and cereals have now become unaffordable how much more proteinous food like fish, beef, eggs and chicken.

The invective inflation in the prices of food and other utilities have followed the nose-dive of the naira. The naira-dollar rate is now 1500 naira/dollar rising from 460 naira/dollar in the last 9 months. Yet neither the removal of subsidy on petroleum products nor the hiked tax on AGO and the increased school fees has been used by the Tinubu government to pay the outstanding allowances and salaries of ASUU and other university staff. The administration has equally failed to raise the minimum wage beyond the stubborn 30,000 naira it has remained before 2014.

The chain of protests began in Minna, Niger state, where a group of market women started a march unto the popular Minna-Bida road to occupy Kpakungu Roundabout. Then the contagion moved to Kano, Ogun, Osun and lastly Lagos. Even Nigerian students abroad have lamented the devaluation of their savings with every fall in the Naira’s value.

The ruling class is spooked. They can see a revolutionary conflagration coming. Never before have loyalists and supporters of an administration been under immense pressure that they are forced to come out on social media platforms to vituperate and denounce the Tinubu government.

The women who started/led the protests in Minna have been invited by the police. In a frantic frenzy to save itself, the Tinubu administration has embarked on a series of face-saving missions such as approving the release 45,000 tonnes of grain. The governor of Niger state has banned all bulk sales of food out of the state but like the paradigm of capitalism, of which the administration is an extension, the methods to save itself increase the risk of its destruction.

This is shown in the disposition of the administration to increasingly threaten a ban on social media. Also, the administration has given directives to International Money Transfer Organisations (IMTO’s) to halt the transfer of funds to Nigerians in dollars and choose naira. This disastrous policy has every potential to fan the embers of public unrest especially among the youths who now rely on free-lance IT jobs for people in the West and get paid in hard-currency that are more stable than the naira. The way to strengthen the naira through foreign exchange proceedings is to demand that the country pay for imports with the naira but the Tinubu administration is too much in servitude to Western imperialism to make such a demand.

However, the way forward to a permanent end to the hegemony of the dollar in Nigeria is a domestically controlled economy where resources are processed from their raw form to make finished products in home-based industries. This remains possible through ending the imperialist grip on the area now known as Nigeria by dismantling the neo-colonial capitalist entity called Nigeria. For this, the ruling class must be replaced with a government of workers and poor peasants and the oppressed ethnic nationalities must be free. For instance, it is impossible to produce sufficient food through agriculture if the land grab and ethnic cleansing continues in the southward direction.

Some analysts have pointed out that the outbreak/occurrence of protests in the north is a result of northern ethnic nationalities’ resentment for a southern president. Others fault the influence of the national question on the impending civil unrest using southern counterparts of the protests. The truth is while the national question may have accelerated the outbreak of random demonstrations in the north it may have delayed it in the south.

The inextricable links between the national question, the economic crises, and past and future protests are again confirmed by the fact that even now protests against terrorism have not stopped. Even before southerners and middle beltans began protesting against Fulani attacks, northerners had already protested the reckless bombing of civilians by the Nigerian military.

In the final analysis, the Tinubu administration is trapped in the quadrangle of neo-colonial subjugation of the peoples in Nigeria that is why the minister for power is threatening the removal of subsidies from electricity according to the directive of the IMF. Tinubu’s recent presidential address also rejected price regulation on food.

We reject any attempts by petty-bourgeois activists and opposition figures to utilise the protests to endorse any politician. Future protests must be against the execution of the inimical neo-liberal policies of the Tinubu government cum the total ouster of the neo-colonial regime. To be replaced by an anti-imperialist government formed by the working class and poor from the regions, that will start the process of freeing the oppressed peoples of Nigeria from the neo-colonial structure of Nigeria for true freedom and independence on a socialist bases.

* Restore Subsidy on Fuel and other Petroleum Products! Repair and Make Operational All Government Owned Refineries! No to the Removal of Power Subsidies!

* Immediate Price Regulation On Food Items! For an Open-Border Regulation Policy Commensurate With the Quantity of Local Food Production! Formed Armed Self Defence Militias to Keep Killer Herdsmen From Native Farming Communities!

* Down With the Student Loan Act! For Immediate Reversal of All Hiked School Fees! Pay All Outstanding Salaries and Allowances of All Teaching and Non-Teaching Staff! For Free And Quality Education Funded By the Government!

* Destroy the Dominance of the Dollar Through Local Production! For Regional and Local Resource Control! Put the Economic Mainstay Under Regional Control of the Workers and Poor Peasants!

* For An Indefinite General Strike To Bring Down the Tinubu Regime! End the Neo-Liberal Seige of World Bank and IMF on West Africa! End The Neo-colonial Entity Called Nigeria and Free All Oppressed Ethnic Nationalities!