The Nigeria Labour Congress,NLC on Monday held a colloquium in honour of Emma Ezeazu, former president of NANS who died recently.Ayuba Wabba, president of NLC used the occasion to reel out the time tested relationship between Nigerian students and the labour movement.
Wabba said “Today’s colloquium as I see it is for us to take stock of the relationship between the students, the popular democratic movement and organised labour. Of course, we can’t talk about popular democratic movement in general without organized Labour having a central place in such discourse, but for the purpose of this gathering, labour is understandably standing alone against the background of previous efforts by the NLC and National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) to forge an organic relationship. This was the NLC–NANS alliance signed in 1984 during the Presidency of Comrade Ali Chiroma and the Lanre Arogundade leadership of the NANS.
“That alliance was given practical expression with the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, students’ crisis in 1986. During that crisis, the Federal authorities accepted that four unnamed students of ABU Zaria were killed in the hands of the police.
“The resultant nationwide students protest was coordinated by Comrade Emma Ezeazu as President of NANS.
According to Wabba ,”When the NANS leadership came to our headquarters, then in Lagos and asked for the support of Nigerian workers, the leadership of the NLC under President Ali Chiroma, and General Secretary Lasisi Osunde duly called a Central Working Committee meeting of the Congress, which chose June 4, 1986 as National Day of Solidarity with NANS. The reaction of the then military government of General Ibrahim Babangida was to see the NLC and NANS action as a civilian plot to overthrow the regime, and responded by clamping labour leaders into detention and laid siege on all NLC offices across the states of the federation.
“In the ensuing crisis, the NLC rejected the General Abisoye Panel of Inquiry, which the Federal Military regime set up to investigate the immediate and remote causes of the ABU crisis, and withdraw Dr. Lasisi Osunde, our General Secretary, who had been named among the membership of the panel. This decision was taken in consultation with the national leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which also decided to boycott the panel, following government’s refusal to suspend Prof. Ango Abdullahi, the ABU Vice Chancellor, and Alhaji Nuhu Aliyu, the Kaduna State Commissioner of Police, to allow for conducive unfiltered condition for the panel to do its work.
“The Abisoye Panel’s report and the government’s white paper on it banned NANS and students’ unions in individual campuses across the country, and abolished the payment of automatic students’ union dues, which before then, were collected centrally by the school authorities for NANS.
“As organized labour, we realized that it was in our own enlightened interest to support the struggle of the students’ movement under the patriotic and nationalist NANS in the early, middle and late eighties, because we see their fight against the commercialization of education as invariably ours because as parents; wherever government and school authorities succeed in imposing these increases in cost of education, we had to bear the cost by paying the fees. Therefore our struggles then against the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), which the Babangida administration introduced, when they organized the palace coup against General Buhari in 1985, and the NANS struggles on the campuses, were mutually re-enforcing one another.
“The Babangida regime waited for our Delegates Conference in February 1988, when it embarked on its decisive assault on the NLC. This was the conference that Comrade Ali Chiroma was due for re-election as NLC President for another four years.
The NLC president recalled that “Not (being) able to break the ranks of the NLC leadership, which was in firm alliance with NANS, the IBB government created a division within the affiliates of NLC and used that as a pretext to take over the NLC, dissolve the Chiroma leadership and appointed an administrator for NLC, which lasted for 10 months – ending in December 1988 when the Comrade Paschal Bafyau leadership of the Congress emerged.
“During the period of the ban on Congress, in April 1988, the Babangida regime took advantage of this to increase fuel price by some 40%. The students took the lead in the nationwide protest that greeted this increase. The protest started from the University of Jos and spread like wildfire to other campuses across the country. Organized labour supported these actions and later the industrial unions under the congress participated in strike actions to back up the students’ actions.
“The above foray into the history of our struggles in the 1986-1988 era when Comrade Ezeazu was President of the NANS, is among other things to underscore the close working relationship that existed between the students body and organized labour led by the NLC.
“The logical question one may ask would be; what happened afterwards? Our comrade, Ezeazu, eventually completed his post graduate studies, after a period of persecution, imprisonment and trials in the hands of the military authorities went to Lagos and soon got recruited as General Secretary of the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO). The CLO, founded in around 1987, was in the late 1980’s and early 1990s, the leading human rights organization in the country. His joining forces with Olisa Agbakoba and Co at the CLO ensured that the organization became a new centre of activities for many of the former students union leaders who had been active in NANS, and who went through the crucible of struggle for students rights on the campuses.
“It was from this group of activists that the pro-democracy struggle and the campaign for the military to leave the political space took very firm roots. Comrade Ezeazu was active in the earlier campaign for convening of the National Conference, then championed by the late Alao Aka Bashorun in 1990. After the 1993 General elections, and its annulment by General Babangida, our Comrade Ezeazu was in the thick of the formation of a number of pro-democracy organisations, which include the Campaign for Democracy (CD); then the United Action for Democracy (UAD), the Democratic Alternative (DA), among others.
Wabba who also reviewed the present state of the Nigerian democracy also said that “On the occasion of this memorial colloquium in honour of Comrade Ezeazu, who consciously chose during his life time, to believe in the vanguard role of the working class in societal development, we pledge our commitment to rebuilding the working relationship that had existed between the apex student body in this country and organized labour, led by the NLC. In our renewed commitment, we do not however underestimate the rot in the system, and hence the mutual trust-building that needs to be developed, enhanced and sustained between our two organizations. For us, rebuilding the working class alliance with the student body is a win-win strategy.
“In the programme of our new leadership of Congress, we have committed ourselves to rebuilding and strengthening our partnership with civil society. The NLC had at the beginning of the current democratic dispensation, in around 2000-2001 held a Civil Society Pro-democracy Summit. Part of the broad aims of the summit was to articulate ways in which as members of the civil society we could campaign for deepening democratic space; as well as promoting democratic culture and good governance in our country. We also had our eyes on strengthening civil society structures and also promote political involvement through people-oriented joint actions and building of political parties of the people.
“Our leadership of Congress will, in the spirit of returning to the founding philosophy of our movement, revisit these thematic areas we identified about one and a half decades ago with a view to engaging them in the overall interest of our movement and the country as a whole.
“Recently, Comrade Jibrin Ibrahim lamented in a piece in which he paid tribute to our historian and icon of working class, Comrade Segun Osoba, when he turned 80 years, that too many among the younger generation are too focused on the narrow domain of crass materialism; that our youth lacked the idealism and passion that is so important in motivating society for progressive change. In the demise of Comrade Ezeazu, the light dimmed on one of the finest of his generation, who had plenty of passion and idealism for an egalitarian Nigerian society where all will be treated fairly and equitably without regard to one’s social status in life.
“As a leadership, we rededicate ourselves to fighting for the full emancipation of the working people of this country.
