Aj. Dagga Tolar

• Time For a Working People’s Party
• Join MSA and Let’s Build the SPN

Left alone to the working masses, there would have been no need to wait till 2023 to bring an end to the Buhari regime, for every single day it continues in power, it will only succeed to pile more miseries upon them; not with all of the failure of the Buhari regime on all the key indices and scorecard of the country’s economy.

From security to food, job creation, health, education, indeed, the Buhari regime has performed below zero, leaving the working masses worst off, from where he left them when he came to power in 2015. For Socialists, this is not unexpected, given the continued adherence and implementation of the neoliberal capitalist policies of deregulation and privatization.

While the working masses have all of the numerical strength to exactly confront the ruling elites and defeat them, it currently lacks the organisational capacity, through the means of its own independent mass political party to achieve this and as such its mighty power lies within it unused and the ruling elites sits atop the wealth of the country, giving themselves the best paradise possible, condemning the working masses to the worst of living conditions.

So here we go again, another General Elections come 2023, the seventh such since 1999, and yet after every election, the working masses, are worst off. With Buhari running out its second term, various individuals from the various wings of the ruling elites have announced their intentions to throw their hat into the race for the Aso Rock and be President of the country come 2023. Again all of their dirty packs of tricks and antics of the ruling elites would come out fully to play in the open. Manipulation, rigging, monetization, to outbid themselves to either win the ticket principally of the APC currently in power or that of PDP which was booted out by Buhari in the 2015 General elections, after 16 years in power.

Already Bola Tinubu and Dave Umahi the governor of Ebonyi state have announced their intention to bid for the office. While Tinubu represents the next most important political machinery outside of the presidency, given his reach and bullion van back politics. He is the beloved among a section of the ruling elites for freely making the resources go round.

Senator Magnus Abe endorsing the candidature of Tinubu states that this is the very reason why members of the ruling elites prefer him to any other candidate compared to Rotimi Ameachi, Minister of Transportation, who says “I am not corrupt and I don’t like money”. Anyone else who will try to “shortchange the rest of us” under the pretext that “he doesn’t like money, the person will take all the money”.
So for members of the ruling elites, Tinubu has demonstrated that he can make money, and share it with members of the ruling elites.

This is the very reason why he is so hated by a section of the presidency and members of the Northern ruling elites, given what Lagos and nearly the whole of the Southwest has become, that a Tinubu Presidency can possible make the same of the country’s wealth a private estate directly under his thumb.

For the working masses, this is completely the worst turn of events to ever expect from the fourth Republic, to have a candidate who does not put forward any idea with developing the means of production or putting first the interest of the working masses, in terms of generating policies and programmes that address what will guarantee basic needs of the working masses in the country.

For Umahi who places his chances on the need for an ‘Igbo presidency” indeed so many from the Southeast would canvass the same, either referring to all the civil rule republic or just the Fourth republic, they state that the time for the Southeast to be allowed is now.

Then there are the Generals, among which include Obasanjo, Danjuma, IBB, Abdulsalam, etc, who seem to have run out of candidates of themselves, with Buhari currently the last of that generation of military past rulers that can be thrown on the working masses, but this does not mean that they will not seek to influence the process and bring their looted wealth to bear on the elections to support a candidate that would not rock the boat and would fundamentally not tilt the boat against them and their interest.

The presidency currently under the grip of the Buhari regime, with their kitchen cabinet gadflies of el-Russia and Malami, would not fold their arms and stand aside as onlookers. Backed by the resources the federal purse would seek, they would attempt to intervene and influence events in the direction that would continue to make them relevant even after the Buhari regime has come to an end.

Is the PDP also capable to return itself to power, playing on the failure of the Buhari regime, to even bring Jonathan back into power, or fly Atiku again as a candidate, or will the PDP governors put forward one of themselves?

One thing is however certain, the interest of the working masses, would not be a focus in the General elections, even though lip services would be paid to it, for all of the contending members of the ruling elites, the major priority would be how to demonstrate to themselves that they would not rock the boat of their capitalist system, from which they all collectively enrich themselves.

Providing assurance to Big Business both in Nigeria and outside, as well as to the World Bank and IMF that the same policies will continue, indeed if the Buhari regime for sake of the general elections manages not to hike petroleum prices, the new regime would demonstrate its loyalty to capitalism and imperialism.

This is the dilemma before the working masses, there not having a choice of themselves or a mass party of their own to choose or vote for. And elections after elections they have preferred to boycott the elections sitting at home.

In 2015 only 29, 432, 083, 100 out of a total of 67, 422, 005 registered voters amounting to 43.65%, in 2019, only 28, 614, 190 out of the 82, 344, 107, / 34.75%. This should be disheartening for any democracy, the ruling elites are not bothered, this apathy gives them room to freely be able to operate and manipulate the electoral process whichever way they want.

Will the same apathy follow through to the 2023 elections? While this act unconsciously announces their rejection of the choices before them of either PDP or APC. It consciously leaves the race open for the ruling elites to do as they fit, and return themselves to power with a minority to rule over the passive majority.

But as expected they are united in ensuring that the working masses do not have an independent platform of their own with which to contend with them, the electoral system is so constructed to make politics an exclusive affair of members of the billionaire club. The politics of party registration requiring offices in all parts

of the country demonstrates this point. Even the electoral body INEC acts is independent only to the point that it defends this approach, for how do you explain deregistration of political parties, and even when the Court of Appeal says otherwise, INEC proceeds to the Supreme Court. This is the situation currently with the Socialist Party of Nigeria, which was founded by both members of the DSM and the MSA and some other smaller parties.

The fault is however not that of the working masses or youths who have demonstrated their displeasure at the regime, will prefer it ends its rule immediately over them, but with the absence of revolutionary leadership with mass appeal to lead them on against the regime. But principally that of the labour leaders who have a mass appeal, lack the revolutionary programme and strength to provide the needed leadership. They paid to have half-hearted lip service to the very idea of a party for the working masses.

Even when an effort was made to build the Labour Party it has completely acted no different from other bourgeois parties in the country, it is completely to inactivity except brought out during elections for sale to the highest bidder of any member of the ruling elites who loses out in either the PDP or the APC.

Of course, a majority of the Labour leaders also buy and endorse the Adams Oshiomole perspective of joining any of the parties of the elites, as opposed to building a party for the working masses.

The working masses must understand their fortunes do not lie in either the APC or the PDP. What did the 8 years of Oshiomole as governor in Edo state what archive for the working masses, it did not fundamentally change the fortunes of the working masses in the country, what example did it offer in terms of strengthening the struggle for an independent political platform of the working masses.

The point must however be made that no section of the ruling elites, indeed no one who takes over from the Buhari regime, unmindful of where he or she would come from would, what part of the country, or religion they observe would in any fundamental tilt governance in the direction to impact and improve the living conditions of the working masses, for without a break with capitalism, replacing it with a socialist planned economy, things will continue to get worse for the working masses.

The ruling class are incapable of rescuing us, it is the working masses that must get organise, a vote for APC or PDP will amount to waste, if anything Nigerians have continued to indicate their non-interest in elections, … but this passive act of boycott is not enough, the working masses must seek to get organise, and they must no longer wait for the labour bureaucrats who are increasingly demonstrating that they are not any different, the needed pressure on them to act must be exacted.

The way forward is in the political action of the working masses; thrive to win power and commence the socialist transformation of Nigeria. We call on the working masses to join the MSA now, join the SPN as we continue to organise and struggle for the emergence of a mass Working people Party, with which to contend with the Ruling elites, only then will elections no longer amount to the emergence of the same, with the working masses putting themselves forward with the programme of Socialist Alternative and course conduct themselves differently.