Popular Struggles in Nigeria 1960-1982

Abstract

77K paper examines some of the dominant social movements in Nigerian politics since independence; the causes and character of the struggles waged by them-students, workers, peasants and the Nigerian Left. It argues that these struggles constitute the mainstream of the struggles of the popular masses and achieved significant political, social and economic results. They were however limited in their overall impact on the Nigerian political economy because they lacked unity and political largely as a result of the weakness of the Nigerian Left. At Nigeria's independence in 1960, it became apparent that the emergent petit bourgeoisie, the merchant class and the elite who mounted the political turf were set to run a neo-colonial state; the promises and hopes of independence were dashed; and all the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist campaigns by the Nigerian peoples- workers, peasants, women, students, the professionals and indeed the left were compromised. The political energies of the popular forces — as expressed, for example, in the Egba women's revolt, the 1945 workers ' strike, and the revolt following the Iva Valley massacre—were squandered. Our objective in this paper is to show that the struggles of popular forces assumed a general tenor and thrust that had as its goal the transformation of the Nigerian social structure. However, these struggles either remained unsyslematised, unharnessed, sectarian and unco-ordinated; or they were not captured and channeled within the framework of a vanguardist political movement This, to us, is the tragedy of the Nigerian socialist movement.1 By popular struggles we mean the struggles waged against the Nigerian state and its ruling class by the social forces located in the lower levels of country's social structure, where the majority of its citizens subsist—workers, peasants, students, unemployed, small commodity producers, and petty traders. But first a brief statement on the nature of the Nigerian state and social classes.