The Blood Flood in Jos and the role of the Working class (Written, March 2010)

The Blood Flood in Jos and the role of the Working class

(This article was written in March 2010 in the wake of the horrible killing in Jos’ Dogo-Nahawa, where over 500 lives were reportedly wasted.)

Again, hundreds of innocent lives, mostly of women and children have been wasted away in Jos villages by ethnic bigots, who are banking on the failure of Nigerian government to secure citizens’ lives and properties. The over-a-decade of civil rule has meant loss of over twenty thousand lives more to one form of communal, ethnic, religious and political strife or the other, according to international agencies. All these have again raised a big question about the viability of Nigeria as a country. In fact, the continuous debate about nationality question, a decade after civil rule shows that there are more to the survival of nation than the ritual of elections.

Many commentators have identified the failure of government to bring those behind the massacre to book as a catalyst for continued hostility in Jos. Nevertheless, nobody has recognized that the failure of Nigerian government to bring the culprits to book reflects the culpability of government. How else will one show the backwardness of the Nigerian state than the fact that despite the massive militarization of Jos, none of the communal crises has been stopped from happening? It should be noted that the military command in Jos is not meant for Jos alone but the whole region. That such military force could not contain the crisis in just a part of its territory reflects not just professional problem, but a deeper the systemic social failure.

The Jos military commander, in response to his command’s failure to arrest the carnage, claimed that he was misled, but it was glaring he and his castes are half sincere if at all they are serious. Is the commander saying no one within the whole security set up, including the police, the SSS and the military, knew the terrain of Jos such that the whole security set up will be misled for over five hours of the massacre? Were the squads sent to curtail the massacre only roving and when it seemed there is no problem left the place within minutes, or was there only one squad moving round the communities? Are the police and the SSS also deceived? When the commander got reports (through text messages), as he claimed, did he discuss with other section of the security arrangement – the police, the SSS and the state government (including the governor), and what were their response? That the commander reduced everything to being deceived shows his high level of contempt for truth.

In the real sense, what the military commander depicted is not just an individual nature, but a reflection of neo-colonial character of public officers. While senior military officers are prepared to defend the power and prestige of the ruling political class, they care less about public safety. This explains why the military will be prepared to undertake foreign military operation in the interest of capitalist ruling class and imperialist forces under the guise of peace-keeping, but can hardly defend public safety. The same police force that cannot stop crimes will smoothly repress peaceful protests against government’s anti-poor policies. According to the police command, more than a quarter of the police workforce is used to protect moneybags and elements in the ruling class. Thus, the military and police have continued the colonial policy of building coercive forces amongst the people with public fund to protect anti-poor governments and imperialist economic forces.

The security forces, aside being tailored towards the defence of the ruling class, are also undemocratically organized. This explains why it is easy for the military commander to tell the public that he relied on ‘text messages’, and sent his men there. This shows total disconnect between the military commanders (and other security heads) and their ranks (who actually carry out the fieldwork) on one hand; and the military forces and the people on the other hand. The security forces are organized in such a way that a commander can take absurd decision in a pepper soup joint or can act on ethnic or racial instinct without recourse to any democratic decision making organ. He only needs to settle himself with his superior. With such an arrangement, curtailment of communal conflict or even criminal acts will become a miracle. Thus, it is necessary to ask the people of Plateau (including the Fulanis, Beroms, and other tribes) to organize united/collective community security/vigilante groups to stop this bloodletting and not rely on any security force.

Some observers are of the view that democratization of the security forces will engender indiscipline and sabotage. However, all coups organized in this country have never being done through democratic input of rank-and-file soldiers, rather through coercion. In addition, many of terrible actions of the police including checkpoint bribe taking are not product of democratization of security forces, but lack of it. If the security forces are democratized and made accountable to the masses, it will be hard for anybody to organize coup. Rules guiding the activities of the security forces will be determined by the people, and the ranks of the force. Aside the fact that such rules will reflect prevailing social conditions, it will be easy to implement. Public military training for adults and community control of the security forces and security arrangement will surely checkmate illegitimate hold on power and thus control the use of public resources. But, it will be illusory to expect the current capitalist, neo-colonial politicians, who are gaining from current arrangement, to undertake this reform. It will take a pro-poor government that emerges from people’s movement to do this. The failure of the security forces to stop or curtail the Jos killings and indeed the various killings in the country is a reflection of the neo-colonial, elite-oriented, undemocratic character of the security forces, which itself reflects the failure of the pro-imperialist, capitalist class to move the country forward.

The state governor, Jonah Jang has tried to exonerate his government by putting the blame on the military command. In reality, the governor is criminally culpable. In the first instance, he claimed to have called the commander, after he was informed of the crisis, only to be “woken up three hours later that people are being hacked down”. Would Mr. Governor have slept if it was the state house that is on fire? Despite the fact that the people being attacked are living close to the government house, the governor could not even send his security to undertake independent security check. Someone jocularly commented that governor’s irresponsible sleep might not be unconnected with his name.

But aside the governor acting true to type of a typical political class in Africa (who care less about people they claim to be representing inasmuch as their economic and political interests are secured), the massacres in Jos reflects the gross economic perfidy of the capitalist political class. May one ask that since the latest crisis in 2008, how many schools, hospitals, public roads, mass housing scheme have been built not only in affected areas but also in the whole of Plateau State. While it has been established that struggle for agricultural resources, especially land was a major cause of the crisis, the state government has not deemed it fit to established a pastoral village for herdsmen and agricultural villages, where farmers will be organised and provided will adequate facilities neither has it established state farms (that will employ tens of thousands of youths and farmers). If these were done ethno-religious crises, if not completely stopped would have been mitigated. In 2008, the state government closed down a state university under the guise of lack of resources to run it. But the same government dole out hundreds of millions of naira to politicians and contractors. Communities affected by these crises still lack basic facilities such as roads, hospitals and schools.

Jos crisis is not a sign of ethnic backwardness as suggested by some commentators but a reflection of economic decadence. Since the introduction of neo-liberal economic policies under SAP in the late 1980’s, many communities have been dislocated economically and socially. Jos, just like every other northern city, used to have viable industries. Also, the presence of railway in many northern states created jobs for tens of thousands of youth and adults. Unfortunately, with the introduction of neo-liberalism, coupled with unprecedented corruption, many public infrastructures and services have been destroyed no thanks to underfunding and mismanagement leading to deindustrialization; with over 800 industries gone under. Thus, a city like Jos, which has become cosmopolitan as a result of not only geographical and climatic nature but also the presence of national facilities, is now reduced to a centre of joblessness, frustration and social tension. The civilian regimes since 1999 have only aggravated these. Since 2007, the country has gotten nothing less than $100 billion from crude oil alone, but this has not translated to increased living standard for the poor with unemployment estimated at over 60 percent among the youth, while more people find it impossible to afford higher education. In this kind of arrangement, expression of frustration through ethnic jingoism cannot be ruled out.

Worse still, those affected by the crises are not rehabilitated nor given better lives. In a sane society, victims of communal crises will be given such treatment, which will make them forget past experiences. But with Nigeria’s treatment of the victims of these crises, recycling of social tension is assured. This is already clear from the nature of the Jos crisis. While the crisis started as a struggle for resources, it has developed into revenge, because those who have seen their lives in ruins do not care to destroy anything they see.

The response of the Acting President has again confirmed the contemptuous character of the Nigerian ruling class. Rather than undertake overhaul of the security arrangement in the state, the acting president used the massacre to boost his political power, by using the crisis as excuse to remove his adversary in the political arrangement. While the National Security Adviser was removed ‘because of the Jos massacre’, the call for the removal of the army commander under whose control hundreds of lives were lost has been ignored by the government. After the killing in Dogo Nahawa, another killing spree has been carried out in Rigim, under the watchful eyes of the security forces. Will Mr. Jonathan remove the new NSA too on this basis? The obvious is that the Jonathan’s presidency is hanging in the balance, thus, it will be dangerous to attack the military hierarchy. This explains the boldness of the army authority in defending the Jos army commander.

The Jos crisis is also a manifestation of the colonial but undemocratic partitioning of Nigeria, to ensure smooth imperialist plundering of the colonial economies. In Nigeria, post-independence regimes have not altered this relation. The local post-independence pro-bourgeois leaders did not bother to address this undemocratic conglomeration through a democratically convened sovereign national conference that will address socio-economic, cultural and ethnic bases of Nigeria’s existence or otherwise. On the other hand, these leaderships only divided the country on regional lines without the democratic input of the people. While, as a result of the global popularity of the post-World War 2 welfare states, some of the regional leaders like Obafemi Awolowo improved social infrastructures, but this was done without giving power to the people through community and workers’ control of resources and development. While all the regional ruling classes were proclaiming federalism, ethnic minorities and communities were not allowed to express their democratic and political rights of decision-making. The failure to have a collectively but democratically planned national development led to serious struggle for control by various paternalistic regional ruling classes leading to emergence of military rule in 1966 and subsequent civil war, a year after.

Breaking of the country into various states and coercing people into a country without their political input not only localize the nationality problem but also multiply it. Each state is a conglomeration of various interests with ruling class at national and local level, using various methods of divide-and-rule to control power and resources. For instance, it is not uncommon to see various state politicians creating policies along the line of ethnicity and indigene-ship e.g. political appointments, employment, taxation, school fees, etc. Also, federal government has made ethnicity a major policy through identifying people’s place of origin (not of residence) and the dubious federal character policy. These are done to veil government’s failure to provide necessities of better lives for the people. All of these coupled with neo-colonial capitalist economic arrangement that isolate the working and poor people from ownership of the economy has continued to make the country a hotbed of ethnic crises.

Thus unless the country is restructured in a democratic manner which will change the socio-economic and political arrangements which has made ethnicity a vital instrument of political and economic control, the various ethno-religious crises and centrifugal forces in the country will not abate. Historically, the current political class cannot carry out this task, as this will undermine the rotten profit system they feast in. How will you tell one percent of the population who control over 80 percent of the oil wealth to allow the over 100 million poor people to determine how public resources will be used to provide education, health, and social infrastructure. It is like asking them to commit suicide.

Thus, the labour movement, being the centrally organized platform of the working and poor masses, must start to build a national political platform that will raise the demands of the working and poor people for economic and political control. Such platform will be built to wrest power from the current set of capitalist political marauders, by building the movement as a democratic platform from the grassroots. Aside demanding democratic sovereign national conference comprising democratically elected representatives of the workers, peasants, petty traders, artisans, unemployed, youth, students, professionals, ethnic nationalities and communities, such platform will build its programmes around free and quality education and health, secure and decent job provision for able bodied youth (with adequate living and working conditions), through massive public work programmes: massive and integrated transport facilities (road, rail, water and air), cheap, mass housing, massive but safe and environmentally friendly power and energy development, mechanized, poor peasant-based, industrial-integrated but environmentally sustainable agricultural and food security system, among others. These demands and others at local and grassroots level will make such political platform, the natural abode of the working and poor people and undermine ethnic tensions.

In order to build this platform, there is need for the working class activists, progressive youth and students, socialists, left-wing activists and organizations to work towards rebuilding and restructuring trade union movement at local, state and national levels by making them democratic fighting platforms. This is the only way to save the country from the impending doom of ethno-religious cleavages. A responsible and fighting trade union movement and working class political platform will mobilize the anger of the people against the system and thus undermine the growth of ethno-religious centrifugal tensions (Niger Delta violence, Boko haram, Jos crisis, etc) that tend to tear the country apart. This is the major challenge as 2011 approaches.

Kola Ibrahim (08059399178)

Kmarx4life@gmail.com, kmarx4live@yahoo.com