University Workers’ Strikes and Governments’ Treachery: For a Popular Action If anything is to be deduced from the current face-off between the Yar’Adua government and striking staff unions of tertiary institutions – Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Senior Staff Union (SSANU) and Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU), it is that the ruling class in Nigeria is incurably politically treacherous and intellectually backward. How else will one define a government that set-up a negotiating committee on ASUU demands, which endorsed the final agreement on behalf and with the knowledge of the federal government, only for the same government to have the effrontery to tell Nigerians that it did not have any agreement with ASUU. What then was the committee led by Deacon Gamaliel Onosode doing with the ASUU since 2007? It is funny the same Umaru Yar’Adua who personally promised in 2007 (when faced with massive credibility problem arising from brazenly rigged elections) to resolve ASUU s...
Introduction The events unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa (subsequently referred to as MENA) since December 2010 have been indeed breath taking. From Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and in a limited but complicated situations, Syria, one autocratic regime after another was challenged by mass movements. Some of these mass uprisings were successful in ejecting dictators from the rented palaces they have used the sweat, blood and flesh of working people to forcefully (and seemingly perpetually) occupy. However, most of the movements were derailed. In places like Bahrain (despite brutal crackdowns), Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Iran and Saudi Arabia, the working people, youths and the downtrodden in general challenged their dictators and corrupt rulers. The small rats of the Maghreb had hitherto assumed the statures of giants having been given magnifying mirrors by imperialism as gifts for their subservience and turning in of their peoples’ lands to imperialist fiefdoms. Th...
Some Musings on Nigeria’s Economy (1) During the Abacha regime, crude oil price sold for around $10 per barrel. Yet Abacha reportedly stole more than $4 billion from our national till, which is aside several billion dollars looted by other generals, sub-generals, MILADs, big businessmen and women, politicians and ‘technocrats’. In this era, the economy was in great crisis, and majority, especially those from working class and sub-working class background, could hardly make ends meet. Poverty was around 70 percent, while unemployment was rife. However, events in the past six years will make looting under Abacha a child’s play. For the past six years, crude oil has sold for an average of $80 per barrel, while Nigeria sold an average of 2 million barrels per day. This is aside greater exploitation of natural gas, with Nigeria having the 10th largest reserve of natural gas, despite the historic and monumental waste through gas flaring. Yet, things have gone from bad to worse fo...
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