Let me begin with a few introductory explanations. The
tittle of this piece was deliberately borrowed from the tittle of Leon
Trotsky’s piece on the 1905 Revolution in Russia in which he was a major
dramatis personae, getting elected as the President of the Petrogad [St
Petersburg] Soviet by the workers’ delegates at the peak of that uprising which
became a revolution.
Trotsky, along with the major leadership of the Russian and
Global Revolutionary Socialist Movement had understood the revolutionary
significance of that 1905 popular uprising of the Russian people, and had
characterized it as a significant Political, but bourgeois democratic [that is
capitalist ruling class] revolution. The reasons were obvious; it not only
shook the Russian Monarchy and feudal system to its very foundation, it marked
the ascendancy of the Russian bourgeois capitalist elite and inaugurated the
foundations of democratic representative government which shared some powers
with the Sovereign – the Czar/Emperor.
More fundamentally that revolution marked the collapse of
the old national consensus among the ruling classes and inaugurated a new
process of renegotiation of the fundamental terms of a new national governing
and ruling consensus.
Similarly, in their historic nature, both the January
Uprising of 2012 and the process and outcome of the 2015 general elections
marked different moments – inaugural and concluding moments, of a Political,
bourgeois democratic revolution in Nigeria. It is for this reason that I have
borrowed Trotsky’s tittle for 1905.
Let me explain further. Many adjectives have been used to
describe the 2015 general elections process and its outcome [which by the way
is still a work in progress]. And all of these adjectives are probably correct,
but they do signify certain fundamental processes.
These elections and its unfolding outcome is significant in
many respects. It is Historic and Momentous, for a number of reasons and
because of a number of factors; factors which helped to shape the outcome.
In the first instance it marks the very first time in the
history of this country that an incumbent president seeking re-election would
be defeated in an election; in the second instance, and following from the
first, it marks the first time that a ruling party at the federal level would
be defeated in a general election by an opposition party; in the third
instance, and deriving from the second, it marks the first time that Nigerians
through a general election will oust a non performing federal government and cause
a change in the federal government to the extent that it will now be
constituted and superintended by a different political party, which was
hitherto the opposition party; and in the fourth instance, it also marks the
first time that votes will significantly count in a general election, arising
from a process that significantly whittles down the chances of electoral fraud
and is largely seen and perceived to be transparent and credible, and producing
an outcome that is largely accepted as largely reflecting the real will of the
electorates.
Why are all these four interrelated processes of historic
significance? Why do they matter? Because all the four aforementioned processes
combine to radically upscale and inculcate popular self-confidence of the
masses in their ability to change a government.
The historic importance of this reinforcement of popular
self-confidence to alter the character of power cannot be over emphasized. The
impact of this is that citizens now know that within the ambit of the choices
available to them, they send a non-performing, unresponsive government and
regime packing, and replace it with another one. The implication of this is
that the business of governing can no longer be conducted in the old ways; it
can no longer be business as usual.
Furthermore the emergence of an opposition party strong
enough to mobilise a movement for change; occurring simultaneously with the
unraveling and implosion of the ruling party which had hitherto been the
institutional manifestation of the old national ruling class consensus; the
success of the citizen driven electoral reform process; and the outcome of the elections represent
the breakdown of the old National Consensus among the ruling class fractions,
and marks the consolidation of the process of negotiating a new national ruling
class consensus.
It is this dialectical interaction between breakdown and
reconstitution of national ruling class consensus that underlies the bourgeois
democratic revolution character of the 2015 general elections, and that qualifies
it as a political revolution.
It is this same bourgeois democratic revolution character,
this breakdown and reconstitution moment that makes this an opportunity for the
popular masses, an opportunity to deepen the revolutionary character of the process,
an opportunity to build on the renewed popular confidence of citizens to
explore the possibility of exploiting the uncertainties of the present
situation to deepen the ferment and perhaps move towards the conversion of the
revolution from a political revolution to a social revolution.
Now that the ruling class fractions are in a state of
turmoil and frantically seeking to renegotiate a new national ruling consensus
amongst themselves, our duty and our task is to raise our own popular demands,
to capitalize on the renewed popular confidence to make social demands on the
ruling class and its new incoming government.
This is the time to raise the demand for the reconstitution
of the state as a developmental state, and for the establishment of a welfare state.
Our overriding minimum demand must be for the institution of a universal,
accessible social security system; such that as the renegotiation process is
taking place the demands and interests of the popular masses will be taken into
consideration and form part of the new national consensus.
Given the heightened levels of expectations surrounding the
emergence of this new govern in waiting, given the grave nature of the national
and global economic crisis compounded in our own case by unprecedented levels
of treasury looting and depletion of national wealth, it will be most likely
that the incoming government may soon be faced with a monumental crisis of
unmet and unrealizable expectations. The implication of these is that there are
many potential uprisings lurking in the corners along the way over the next
four years.
This general context and scenario then presents an
opportunity for the popular mass movement to deepen the ferment, and push the
boundaries of the political revolution to its elastic limit, thrusting the
process towards supplanting the political revolution with a social revolution.
To accomplish this we need to build a mass political platform to the left of
the incoming APC government. The fact that the opposition is now in power
should provide us with a context within which to build a new opposition.
To conclude, a few last lines. And this is to the APC and
its incoming government. What does change really mean for the APC? What is the
APC’s assessment of the Nigerian crises? What are the 4 or 5 areas of focus
that its government will prioritise in addressing and resolving the Nigerian
crisis? What In concrete terms will the APC government do to transform the
power and energy situation over the next four years? How many MWs will it add
to the power generation capacity annually over the next four years? What
concrete steps will it undertake to improve the transmission capacity of the
national grid, particularly given that any given time the transmission capacity
of a national grid should be much more than the total generation capacity for
electricity? How will it resolve this disconnect between power generation and
power transmission?
How does the APC government intend to deal with youth
unemployment? While addressing critical questions of inclusive and diversified
economic growth and rehabilitation and building of basic infrastructure to
service the economy?
What Nigerians want from the APC now is fairly fleshed out
document detailing its alternative policy proposals, and outlining its Four
year National Development Plan for the country. We have had enough of the
vagueness of change. Now is the time to give us a picture of this change.
And for the PDP, apart from the factors listed at the
beginning, why did it lose? Well at the inception of the PDP regime in 1999,
poverty rate was 54% in 2001, and hovered around 68% in 2015; And this in the
midst of unprecedented economic growth and high levels of earned revenue.
Or take unemployment; official unemployment rate was 8% in
2003 and had risen to 24% by 2015, with youth unemployment skyrocketing to 40%
according to NBS and 80% according to CBN by 2015.
And whereas economic growth rate averaged about 8% in the
early 2000s, by 2015 it was hovering between 5% and 6% per annum.
Take education, of the 57 million out of school children
globally, 11 million were Nigerian children by 2013, the second highest such
concentration after Pakistan.
Or health, where by 2015, according to official figures, 37%
of Nigerian children under five years are malnourished.
Add to these mix unprecedented levels on insecurity, as well
as high cost of living, then it becomes clear that the reasons why PDP lost and
APC won had nothing to do with the so-called ethnic gang up now being
postulated by those unwilling to face reality. Instead the reasons had plenty
to do with the abject conditions of living of Nigerians. The reasons are rooted
in class exploitation and its outcome, not in ethnic solidarity and alliances.
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