May Day: Beyond Symposia and Parades
May Day has become synonymous with the history of struggles by owners of labour wage earners in the capitalist money economy controlled by owners of capital and means of production. It is against this backdrop that every country within the capitalist orbit performs the annual ritual of speeches and display of fanfare while the real issues of exploitation, pejorative work place and declining workers’ wages and welfare suffer at the back bench.
This year’s May Day ritual seems a drastic shift when one takes a reflective appraisal of the theme of the symposium that has become an integral part of the annual ritual over time. Considering the arrays of labour activists on the list of invited guest speakers and discussants for this year’s symposium, we noticed a paradigm shift in tone and commitment to plan of action. The cerebral Professor Omotoye Olorode presented the guest lecture while the indefatigable Femi Aborisade and Professor Member Genye are discussants respectively.
Professor Olorode’s paper titled “Labour Relations in Economic Recession : An Appraisal “was a bombshell detonated to wake the working class from its slumber since the return to democracy. It was also a scathing castigation of the Nigeria’s ruling class that regrouped under another retired General on another political platform to continue to rule Nigeria. He equally reminded the Nigeria Labour Congress that while acknowledging with approval the ongoing anti-corruption war recognises the need for a definitive agenda for economic revival of 2015.
He also reminded the union centres (NLC/TUC) to revisit the formal position of the NLC on the dynamics of the neo-liberal crisis. He affirmed that the trade union movement is best placed to provide leadership in building a just society and sustainable democracy in Nigeria. He assured that, working towards a planned economy is the ultimate alternative. He urged that we want to see an end to industrial backwardness, mass poverty, illiteracy, the collapse of health and social services and institutions, foreign economic dependency, gross exploitation of labour and political dictatorship and instability.
He further stressed that we envision an economy founded on twin-pillars of state-led industrialisation and agricultural development within the context of holistic national development plan. In conclusion, he gave variegated definitions of recession and causes as he tied it to APC Change Agenda and the unchanging agenda of the Nigeria’s ruling class. He therefore stripped all the confusion and illusions that Nigeria’s ruling class formations, intellectuals and their media have erected and imposed on the masses of the Nigerian people and itself. He confirmed that the labour movement in Nigeria has insisted from the late 1970s that the agenda of the ruling class and international capital had consistently remained antagonistic to that of the working class people of Nigeria.
He lamented the plight of local productive capacity in the country as shown by the conspiracy that deliberately mismanaged and destabilised Ajaokuta Steel Complex and others established as a foundation of industrialisation of Nigeria’s economy.
He takes us on a retrospective reflection to recall successive speeches during regime change in Nigeria to grapple with the class character of the ruling class. That capitalist liberal democracy is only but a purgative mechanism that expels a clique of public treasury looters with another through party politics.
Comrade Ogbu A. Ameh, author of “In The Struggle” and Editorial Member, Socialist Worker