[NOTES FOR PRESENTATION AS A PANELIST AT THE TUC CONFERENCE ON WORKERS POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT]
BY JAYE GASKIA [Member of The People’s Alternative Political-Movement (TPAP-M) Secretariat]
There is no doubt that as a people, as a class and as a movement, we are presently at another critical juncture in our collective history.
This juncture is characterised by a significant systemic crisis of existential proportions. The various crises are in the economy, the polity, the social fabric and the way of life – that is the culture of our people, as well as the crisis of social services delivery. All of these have been building up over years, if not decades. All have been and continue to be driven by the complete failure of the ruling class. There is a hollowing out of the state and near collapse of the infrastructure of social cohesion. All are coming together, combining to produce this creeping and protracted existential crisis, of potentially high cataclysmic nature.
But these monumental and complex crises have also called forth and continues to call forth the more or less organised, more or less conscious and more or less determined, more or less active resistance of the toiling masses and the working peoples of our country.
It is the coming together of all of these various aspects of the current historical juncture that has made it necessary for us to place workers and working people’s political participation and electoral engagement on the front burner of public discourse. And it is this that has provided us with the opportunity to examine and interrogate the relationship between the moment and the movement, within the context of navigating the dialectical nexus between the twin necessity to combine Strategic Patience with Tactical Urgency.
The Moment And The Movement:
A political moment is a definite or defined period in time, a historical period, short and transient by its very essence. In this sense, the student rebellion of 1986 in the aftermath of the ABU massacre, the Anti-SAP Uprising of May 1989, the January Uprising of 2012, and the #EndSARS youth uprising of October 2020 are historical and political moments.
A movement on the other hand is a sustained, long-duration mobilisation of solidarity by organised groups increasingly acting together and collaborating, around a set of common grievances, articulating a set of common demands arising from those grievances, the resolution of which will mitigate or eradicate the cause of the grievance.
Central to both the historical moment and the political movement though is the essential necessity for solidarity, for activating, building and enhancing solidarity. Building solidarity however requires the ability and the capacity to initiative and nurture broad ranging relationships – interpersonal, and organisational, and inter-organisational.
A moment may or may not be the outcome of the conscious effort of a movement or of movements, but to have any chance of being sustained till the ends are met, it must spawn a conscious movement; one that will be able to consciously initiate new moments in the course of a more or less uninterrupted prosecution of the struggle and the cause over the long period.
During such moments, the class struggle becomes more and more overt, the resistance becomes more intense, even if not always concentrated and sustained, as a consequence of the repressive character of the state becomes more and more exposed, the with ruling class and the state relying more on the use of force – that is overt repression, to maintain its hegemony and control over society.
We are once again living at such a moment. We are seeing, once again, the conscious, deliberate, painstaking and systematic combination and recombination of organised social forces and radical left formations into an incipient Movement, in the organised and structured/structural sense of the phenomenon – The Peoples Alternative Political Movement [TPAP-M]; the process to consummate which began in August of 2020, and led to The Peoples Alternative Political Summit of March 2021, and which gave rise to the establishment of the movement at the end of the political summit.
The Relationship Between The Moment And The Movement;
What are the defining characteristics of the current moment? And what role can our movement play in transforming this moment into a revolutionary crisis, and in doing so, convert it into an opportunity for our people?
The essential characteristics of the current moment include the intractable economic and political crisis, occasioning deep seated political instability and raising real prospect of economic collapse and societal disintegration. This have been compounded and heightened by endemic insecurity, ravaging poverty and mass immiseration of the toiling masses; the ongoing and deepening energy crisis – continuing crisis of availability, accessibility and affordability of fuel and electricity [unending fuel scarcity, skyrocketing fuel prices, epileptic and erratic power supply, and repeated hikes in electricity tariff].
There is also the rising anger of the people, heightened and palpable tension in society, the eroding confidence of the people in society as it is presently organised and run, and the increasing sense of urgency among the people that something is bound to give; amplified by their wish to see this tearing at seams hastened up.
Hanging over all of these, is the fact of the upcoming general elections of 2023. And of course, the crises and the elections are intertwined and interconnected. The way and manner the crises develop will play a significant role in deepening the political crisis, and as well in determining the outcome, for good or for bad, of the general elections.
What role is there for the movement, for our movement, in all of these? The potential of our movement [TPAP-M] derives from the fact that in its conception, in its foundation, in its development and evolution, and in its political discourse and organising, it is a movement of the working peoples and the toiling masses; A movement embracing organisations of the working class and working peoples, as well as conscious individuals and activists from among the working people and the working class. Its program – both the Political Action Program and the Economic Action Plan responds consciously to the interests and aspirations of the working people and the working class.
This is aptly summarised in the self-description of the movement as “a movement committed to the emergence of a mass workers party and the socialist transformation of Nigeria.”
Our collective tasks during this specific historical moment are to organise and combine the socioeconomic and political struggles of the oppressed and exploited working class and working peoples. We need tochannel this mighty and focused torrential energy of the class towards achieving the mutually reinforcing aims of resisting exploitation, hardship and repression; and organising to wrest political power from the ruling class and using this power to organise the transformation of society.
To play your role in building The Peoples Alternative Political Movement (TPAP-M) in your community, school or trade union please provide your details at: https://forms.gle/Bn7P4gEfk1JvtGpZ6
We urge each of you, to talk to others, to canvass for the movement, and to establish circles of the TPAP Movement in your communities, places of work, or places of instruction (school/campus).
The Political Action Program and the Economic Action Program, along with other primary documents of the TPAP Movement, can be found at: https://thepeoplesummit.org/download