Lead article
March1999

Nigerian elections reflect new upheavals on African continent

Ba Karang

The Feb. 27 election in Nigeria, which resulted in the election of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo as president, is being touted by the regime as proof of its "transitional program" for restoring the country to democracy. But no one should be fooled into believing that the military junta is serious about handing over power and returning to the barracks.

Obasanjo became the first elected president in 16 years by defeating Olu Falae, a former finance minister. Obasanjo served as president in the late 1970s in a military-backed government, which violently suppressed student and worker protests. After falling out with the regime of Gen. Sani Abacha in 1995, he was jailed and only secured his freedom after Abacha's death last year. Since then he has campaigned as the one candidate who can act as a "bridge" between military and civilian leaders. (See the August-September 1998 "Black World" column on Nigeria's political crisis and the rise of Obasanjo.)

Though Obasanjo's campaign has attracted some interest because of the desire for democracy, he is also distrusted by the masses because of his long ties to the military. His campaign was openly backed by a number of powerful generals who are sure to make their voices heard in any government headed by him. Despite these elections, the military will continue to rule the country, and their desire for military hegemony in the continent will remain intact.

NEW STRUGGLES IN NIGERIA

What has led the military to create the pretense of a transition to democracy is that the masses' hatred of international capital is beginning to unite the Nigerian masses in their struggle for equality and justice. The hanging several years ago of environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who led a struggle of the Ogoni people for freedom and self-determination, showed the international community that the bitter struggle of Nigerians against their military rulers and international capital had gained momentum. More recently, this year's annual convention of the National Association of Nigerian Students declared its support for the struggle of ethnic nationalities and for environmental justice, and promised to campaign for the restoration of democracy in government institutions

Another recent development is that the youth from the Ogoni, Ijaw and other ethnic groups living in the delta region (where most of the oil is extracted) have asked the federal government to redress the terrible injustice and abuse of human and environmental rights.

Most recently, workers of Ekiti State and Plateau State have joined in industrial actions and strikes in demand of a minimum wage. These workers are demanding that their wages be tripled in response to the terrible decline in living conditions and wages that they have been subjected to throughout the last decade of military rule.

These and other grassroots struggles, and not the parading of a "transitional program" of a return to civilian rule by the military, will define the future political situation of the country. An oil producing nation like Nigeria which has failed to provide even basic fuel supplies to its own people, where corruption and regionalism is endemic, and where national development is at the mercy of international capital is clearly a nation that is running out of time.

The Nigerian junta's struggle for military hegemony on the continent also continues unabated, even though the economic realities in the country speak against such activities. The high levels of unemployment, the lack of clean water, the environmental disasters and the increasing poverty of the masses are not opening the eyes of the junta to reality.

CIVIL WAR IN SIERRA LEONE

Today a quarter of Nigeria's army is involved in conflicts in neighboring African countries. The West African peace keeping force ECOMOG is a tool of the Nigerian military junta. It has greatly lost credibility since it intervened in Liberia several years ago. The ECOMOG forces fought a bitter war with the forces of present Liberian President Charles Taylor who is said to be a strong defender of rebel forces fighting in Sierra Leone.

Of the 15,000 ECOMOG troops now in Sierra Leone, 12,000 are Nigerian. The war in Sierra Leone has claimed more than 20,000 lives since it started in 1991. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), whose leader, Foday Sankoh, is currently detained in Nigeria, at first enjoyed much support from the ordinary people. By May 1997 it joined with the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) to remove president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah from office.

Kabbah was reinstated by the Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces in February 1998. He promised to bring peace to the country by talking to the RUF. This was welcome news for all Sierra Leonians. But he soon did the opposite. Under his rule 24 soldiers were executed, 43 were given the death sentence and 1,200 were detained for political reasons. Instead of the promised peace talks, he announced a death sentence against Foday Sankoh.

However, the record of the AFRC and RUF is no better. Their recent victory in Freetown, when they briefly took control of the capital, showed the true nature of their brutality. Thousands were murdered and made homeless. According to the UN mission that returned from Freetown, over 150,000 people were displaced and 1,000 men, women and children abducted by the rebels.

This alone proves that despite their claims to be "revolutionary," the RUF and AFRC are incapable of convincing anybody that they will bring about a genuine change to the country.

The ECOMOG forces are also guilty of abuses. They have carried out summary executions of suspected rebels and civilians, including children. But this does not apparently impress the U.S. According to Susan Rice, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, the Clinton administration will ask Congress to provide $4 million in logistical support to ECOMOG.

The U.S. and Britain have long given military training to the forces of Kabbah. The French are said to be on the side of the RUF and AFRC. The so-called end of the Cold War is clearly a nightmare for the African continent, as shown in the day to day reality of its people.

THE AFRICAN ECONOMY

What underlines the political situation in places like Nigeria and Sierra Leone is a continental economic crisis. After more than three decades of political independence, economic development for the African continent is a dream in the far distance.

The colonial economy was aimed at aiding the industrial development and economy of the colonial masters. It was never meant to achieve economic development in the interests of the colonized nation. The dependence of the colonial economy was blessed by the African middle class, which was more concerned with building an alliance with either of the two world superpowers, the U.S. and Russia, than with breaking from its dependency.

Certainly, as Frantz Fanon argued, most of them lacked the basic understanding of the nature of their national economies. In such a situation it became a matter of choosing sides and not basing themselves on the creativity of the African masses.

As Raya Dunayevskaya wrote in the chapter on "The African Revolutions and the World Economy" in PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION, "The tragedy of the African revolutions began so soon after revolution had succeeded because leaders were so weighed down with the consciousness of technological backwardness that they turned to one of the two poles of world capital. The isolation from the masses deepened so that the new rulers began to look at them as mere labor power."

The colonial economies were designed for the maximum exploitation of surplus value, and technological transfer or capital investment from the West or the East was only a political statement to contain the freedom struggles. The simple fact is that neither the West nor the East have enough capital for itself, let alone to export to Africa.

Africa is in fact falling further behind than ever. In 1993 its share of world trade was 2.4%; in 1996 it was 2%; and in 1997 it fell to 1.9%. In the 1960s the annual capital growth rate of GDP was 1.3%. It fell to 0.8% in 1975 and zero by 1986.

Since then, even oil producing nations such as Nigeria have seen their GDP growth decline, from 4.2% in 1996 to 3.6% in 1997. The non oil-producing nations are experiencing a decline in world market prices for agricultural export goods. In these nations GDP growth declined from 3.7% in 1996 to 2.3% in 1997. In the least developed countries GDP growth declined from 4.9% in 1996 to 2.4% in 1997.

The fall in agricultural growth follows the same trend. Though the amount of cultivated land increases, yield per hectare has declined seriously. Moreover, less than 2% of cultivated land in Africa is irrigated.

The problem is not that poor farmers are irresponsible but that agriculture still "remains monoculture, the price of their one crop buffeted by the price structure of the world market, and whether they plan or do not plan has little effect on the neocolonialist structure" (PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION, p. 225).

All of this has led to a massive debt burden. The debt which African countries owe the West totaled $301 billion in 1993, then went up to $312 billion in 1994 and to $349 billion in 1997. This accounts for 67% of the continent's total GDP. The service of this debt represents a massive transfer of capital from the continent to Europe and the U.S.. Furthermore, new tax systems and so-called new trade liberalization policies promoted by the IMF and World Bank are accelerating the rate of capital export from Africa to rich Europe. Neither the West nor the East can claim any statistical proof that they are committed to the development of the continent.

CONTRADICTIONS FROM WITHIN

The economic deterioration has created a climate of political tension throughout Africa. In countries like Zimbabwe, the fascist character of the leadership has become so open that one now begins to wonder if it can survive any longer.

Angola, which along with Zimbabwe has sent troops to the Congo to defend Kabila's government from an insurgency, is now facing serious military problems at home. The rebel forces of UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, have intensified their offensive. The UN, which was supposed to monitor the peace process, was reduced to an onlooker by allowing UNITA to rearm and mobilize their forces.

Thousands of Angolans are being forced to move to safer towns. The food crisis in the country is likely to get out of hand in a very short period of time. The question is whether the government will survive this time without the help of the Cubans who have more problems to look after than sending soldiers to Angola.

Perhaps most disheartening is the war between Ethopia and Eritrea. The ruling parties of these two nations fought side by side against the Stalinist government in Ethiopia in the 1970s. Yet today they are dropping bombs on hospitals, destroying water storage facilities and schools, and killing men, women and children in order to secure a "military victory." If former revolutionaries can only manage to address each other through a conflict that was created by the very forces which they fought and died against, then we must recognize that the spirit of the revolution has been betrayed.

I have no reason to believe that these failures will be the model of the coming African revolutions. The coming revolutions have the advantage of witnessing the grounding of revolution from within the revolutionary movement itself. They can therefore learn the lessons of the past and start on a much higher level than previously.

As the ongoing struggles in Nigeria show, the African masses continue to search for new paths to liberation, despite the enormous barriers facing them from international capital and internal crises. As Dunayevskaya wrote in PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION, "The whole point seems to be to hold onto the principle of creativity, and the contradictory process by which creativity develops."