Nigerian Struggles - Nigerian Trade Unions Protest

Nigerian Trade Unions Protest

The Nigerian Trade Union Congress sent the following cable to Oliver Stanley, British Colonial Secretary: “Nigerian Trades Unions disfavor the constitution in its present unsatisfactory form. Approval by the Legislative Council is unauthorized. Workers’ claims have been flagrantly ignored Memorandum follows.” One of the main points in the memorandum of the TUC was that “the proposed constitution should provide for
adult suffrage irrespective of income.” At the huge May Day 1945 celebration of the TUC in Lagos a resolution demanded full adult suffrage for the people of Nigeria. There are no essential differences between the new constitution and the old. The projected “reforms” do not in any respect constitute progress toward Nigeria’s independence.
The real power still rests in the hands of the Governor and his Executive Council. The new “reforms” simply serve to reinforce the alliance between the British and autocratic native rulers in opposition to the will and desires of the people. The primary functions of the chiefs under this system of indirect rule are to
maintain imperialist “law and order,” secure forced labor, recruit troops in time of war, and, above all else, collect the extortionate taxes imposed by the British authorities. Before the conquest of the country by the Europeans the
authority of the chiefs derived from the people and from elected councils of elders. They were subject to the will of the people. If he became autocratic and tyrannical, the chief could
be removed by the people. Today under the system of indirect rule, the chiefs are servants of the British overlords. The people are recognizing the true role of the chiefs as agents of British rule and asserting themselves in opposition. The Colonial authorities, aware of the dangers of this rising
tide of popular discontent, are attempting to arrest the growing democratic aspirations of the people by tieing the chiefs more closely to themselves under the new constitution.
The West African Pilot, reviewing these proposals, said: “Any system of government which nourishes feudalism or advances a baronial class who must thrive at the expense of the lower classes is undesirable ... The powerful indirect rulers of the north enjoy good salaries (5,000 pounds per annum) and Oriental palaces, they have nothing to complain about. But the classes under them have no justice, no education and their health is not enviable. The building up of a ruling class, vested with power, supplied with money and set up to live in pomp and luxury side by side with a poor and underfed peasant class, will have exactly the same result as such a
system has had in other countries – namely, the people seek the destruction of such institutions.”
* * * *
The economic and political events of the past five years in Nigeria culminating in the triumphant general strike of the organized workers against the government confirm anew the Trotskyist theory of the permanent revolution applied to the struggles of the colonial peoples. In his report to the Third
Congress of the Communist International in 1921 Trotsky predicted: “The combination of the military nationalistic oppression of
foreign imperialism, of the capitalist exploitation by the foreign and native bourgeoisie, and the survivals of feudal disabilities are creating the conditions in which the immature proletariat of the colonial countries must develop rapidly and take the
lead in the revolutionary movement of the peasant masses.”

Source - Fourth International, October 1945
Robert L. Birchman
Class Struggles In Nigeria