• Blame President Buhari for the Incessant Attack on The country’s Infrastructure.
 • MSA Commiserates with the Trade Union Congress Over the Death of Musa Lawal and Akin Akinsola and with other victims and their families.
• Labour Unions Must Use this Year’s May Day to Condemned the Attacks and Demand Improved Social Infrastructural Development and Workers’ Living conditions!

By Abdullah Bilah 

The terrorist attack on the Kaduna bound train from Abuja on Monday night is an unfortunate incident and highly condemnable. These continuous attacks by the armed group have proved that the Buhari administration has lost control of securing the life of the Nigerian working masses.

The terrorist attack on the train took over eight lives of innocent commuters and several other passengers were kidnapped. Among the innocent Nigerians killed in the attack include the General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) Barrister Musa Lawal and the Kwara State Chairman of the TUC Comrade Akin Akinsola. We in the Movement for A Socialist Alternatives (MSA) commiserates with the family of the lost ones and the Trade union movement over this unfortunate situation and we put the blame squarely under the leadership of President Mohammadu Buhari and his APC government. 

The government’s failure to tackle the growing insecurity in the country and improve the standard of living of the ordinary people is among the cause of this disastrous incident witnessed in the country. A week before this incident, the country witness another attack by armed bandits in the Kaduna airport killing a security guard in the process. 

Despite the huge amount allocated annually to the defence sector in the country’s budget, the rank and file of the security operatives are still underequipped and poorly enumerated. The roads as other means of transportation are not motorable and in the last period have become an avenue for kidnappers to operate unhindered. Many people have been reportedly kidnapped not only along the Kaduna-Abuja route but along almost all express roads across the country. 

We demand immediate compensation to the families of the dead, expedient and adequate health care for the injured as well as the timely rescue of those who have been kidnapped.

We urge the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and all the concerned unions including left organizations to use this horrible incident to declare a solidarity action while mourning the dead. 

The seven years of the Buhari government have demonstrated this reality. Nothing fundamentally has changed. The insecurity challenge has multiplied despite the huge budgetary allocations earmarked yearly to fight insurgency in the country. The report has it that N1.52billion was earmarked for Security Operations and N60.9million for rehabilitation of the National War Museum, Umuahia. 

These funds are not going to serve the purpose for which it was budgeted from the experience of past looting. The military top echelon and elites in government will cut their cake from it. This is the predicament facing the security challenge in the country. And from a socialist point of view. Insecurity has to do with the rise of poverty, unemployment, hunger, underdevelopment and failed policies of the government. 

In a planned socialist society, the primary objective of governance shall be organizing society to meet the needs of the working masses. And this would achieve by bringing the wealth and resources of society into common ownership of the working masses themselves. Only then will it possess all that is needed to take up the task of developing the means of production, ensuring the necessary distribution of goods and services, developing infrastructural facilities, health, schools, roads, houses, electricity, energy, etc by so doing creating millions and millions of jobs that would help tackle the scourge of unemployment. Only then can banditry, kidnapping, and other forms of insecurity be addressed and resolved. This will be the working people managing the resources of the country for their common good. 

We want to state that the Federal and the Kaduna State governments are clueless. As at going to the press, nothing has been said or done to rescue those that were kidnapped. With the spade of kidnaps all over the country, the working masses are left to their fate, to raise funds and pay the ransom, and they get slaughtered if they or their relatives can’t raise the funds.

The Buhari regime is unwilling to put an end to the issue of insecurity in the nation. The issue of killing had been ongoing in Southern Kaduna and so many other places in the North for so many years, but the Buhari-APC led Government has practically, done nothing to put an end to the crisis.

We in the MSA oppose the capitalist policies of this regime and the previous regime, which have continuously collapsed the economy and widened the gap between the rich and the poor. A system that has continued to contribute to the increase of social insecurities, poverty, unemployment and all form of economic hardship chewing millions of people miserably.

This, they have done by placing the commonwealth of the nation in the hands of only a few individuals in the name of privatization and deregulation, and. In every part of the country most especially in the northern part where textile industries used to employ thousands of people have today collapsed to the barest minimum.