Column
By Edwin Madunagu
WE may begin by recalling two key propositions that have so far emerged in the current discussions on the political responsibility of the Nigerian Left in this period. And, for clarity, by “this period” I mean the 20th year of the Fourth Republic, a period defined by the approach to a general election, worsening of the material conditions of the masses, national disunity, aggravated violence and insecurity, declining ability of the Nigerian state to discharge the elementary functions of the state (except the coercive ones) and absence of any national mobilizing project or promise by the ruling class or any of its leading factions or segments.
The two propositions to which the opening paragraph refers include, first and foremost, the imperative of constructing a viable fighting organization around a general programme of struggle and a people’s manifesto that responds concretely and openly to the key issues that currently assail Nigeria and the masses of the Nigerian people. The “viable” in this first proposition carries its ordinary meaning: possessing the capacity for self-reproduction or elementary continuity.
The construction of a viable organization and the publication of a people’s manifesto are formulated as an integral project, that is, the same process. That is what will make the appearance of the platform serious and historically different from its predecessors. The materials and conditions for this construction exist—even now. To discover them, inspire them and mobilise them is part of the task.
The second broad proposition relates to the question of alliance-construction. But an abstract idea or an ideological movement cannot construct alliances. It is a concrete organization with a concrete programme or project that seeks and constructs alliances with another concrete organization or organisations. What this means in our own context is that the Nigerian Left, as an ideology and as a movement, must evolve a viable organization with a concrete programme and a concrete people’s manifesto and, armed with these, seek to construct electoral and/or non-electoral alliances with other concrete organisations. This is a precise statement of the primary task of the Nigerian Left in “this period”. And it is the subject of this piece.
It is accepted that every serious or “adult” alliance has or should have a platform, that is, “terms of reference” and limits. And the terms are always specific—to achieve a specific common objective or a set of specific common objectives, to be pursued by specific means and methods. In other words, there is no “alliance-in-general” or “general alliance”. As soon as it becomes possible to construct a general, open-ended alliance, an alliance without limits between two or more organisations, then there are no essential differences between them. In that case, a merger, rather than an alliance should be on the table. On the other hand, if a Leftist organization in an alliance is so encumbered and restricted by limits that it loses its essential identity and is denied all means of independent residual activity, then such alliance is simply liquidationist, and nothing should lead a Leftist formation into it. And if accidentally, it finds itself there it should pull out immediately—quietly or noisily, depending on the situation.
The need for Leftist organisations to construct political alliances for legal and extra-legal, electoral and non-electoral struggles is central in the global history of all known variants of modern revolution: national-liberation, national-democratic, popular-democratic and socialist. The need was confronted and realized in the Russian Revolution (1917), the Chinese Revolution (1949), Cuban Revolution (1959), and several post-Second World War anti-imperialist struggles in several countries of the Middle East, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa. The need was also confronted and realized in several European countries in the period before, during and after the Second World War. That was the period of popular fronts necessitated principally by fascism.
The Nigerian Left did not emerge in a historical void or in a political-ideological vacuum. It did not emerge as an isolated phenomenon. The Nigerian Left emerged in the mid-1940s as a tendency in the anti-colonial students’ groups and labour groups, Nigerian returnees from the Second World – July 6, 2018 @ 10:55 GMT |
Tags: Notes on political alliances in Nigeria
