The Obidient Current And the Election:
The transactional entrance of Peter Obi into the labour party on the eve of its contrived political bazaar of a presidential primary, enable the activation and energization of the Obidient Current, largely derived from the #EndSARS protest movement of October 2020. The major actors in the #Obidient current were also active in, and derived their relative social media celebrity status from the previous #EndSARS protests. In this sense, we can say that the #EndSARS was the precursor of the #Obidient Current.
Just like the EndSARS before it is a largely middle class led youth current characterised by intense mass mobilisations primarily online and through the social media. For this reason, it also reflected the individualism of the middle class, in its promotion of individual stardom, in its disdain for organisation, in its disregard for discipline, and in its hostility towards the workers and the working class. It attempts to mask its hero worship of capitalism and the capitalist free market system, with a barely contained dismissiveness of socialism and ideology.
In its ahistorical nature, it is impervious to learning. Cocky, simplistic, intrepid, given to being self-absorbed, bereft of depth, and shallow minded, the stupendous scale of its ignorance is matched only by the humongous outrageousness of its arrogance. It learned no lessons from the #EndSARS, and has not indicated any ability to learn any lessons from its disastrous mismanagement of the historic moment provided by the dynamics of the 2023 general elections.
This Obidient Current took control of the social media space, obliterated dissenting views, demonstrated blatant intolerance of any views or opinions other than theirs and drowned out any potential voices of reason. The Labour Party and its presidential candidate became beholden and captive to this Obidient Current, dragging the trade unions bureaucracy and the labour party supporting left down with them. Neither the labour bureaucracy nor the labour party supporting left could find their own voice within this current. They had no influence at all within, much less over the Obidient Current. The uncritical nature of the way the labour bureaucracy and the labour party supporting left, sought to take advantage of the groundswell that the Obidient Current presented, led them down the path of opportunism.
Labour Party And the Elections:
Why are we concerned with the Labour Party? Why not the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP], the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), the All Progressives Grand Alliance [APGA], or even the Social Democratic Party (SDP), on any of the other parties that contested in the elections one may want to ask? The answer is simple.
The Labour Party is the only that claim to be a party for workers, even if not a party of workers; and it is the only one in the midst, with historical ties to the labour movement, with respect to its founding and sponsorship at inception by the trade union Federations.
However, as we have seen from the foregoing, even at foundation, the party was at best in its aspiration, a party for workers, not a party of workers, and it has long since lost even this character as a party.
The Labour Party went into and fought the 2023 general elections as a party opportunistically fielding an array of candidates, with little or no connection to one another or to the labour party, other than they were each refugees forced out of their own political parties, and who had enough resources to buy and purchase the ticket of the labour party, in order to use the party as platform to contest the elections, and cash in on the groundswell created around the party by the Obidient current upon the grand, but no less transactional entrance of Peter Obi into the party.
In this respect of party ticket buying, akin to the vote buying associated with party primaries and the general elections, the labour party was no different from the other parties.
What is more, the Labour party of the eventual four main contending parties for the presidency, was the only party whose fielded candidates were overwhelmingly not members of the party till a few hours to the political bazaars, characteristic of the so-called labour party primaries.
These candidates who bought the labour party tickets after purchasing forms, participating in, and losing out in the primaries processes of of their own parties, were never subjected to any scrutiny to determine the alignment of their goals with the party program, nor were they even legally properly sponsored by the Labour party for the elections, given that none of them were members of the party as at the time of the party’s submission of its membership register to INEC, 90 days prior to their party primary, and none of them were even granted waivers by properly constituted and appropriate organs of the labour party.
Each candidate came into the labour party with their own political structures, and organised their campaigns autonomously not only of each other, but also of the labour party bureaucracy and the labour bureaucracies of the two labour federations. At no time was their any sense of common programmatic purpose, common agenda, and coordination of messaging in the campaigns.
It is perhaps almost certain, that if Atiku had not insisted on contesting the PDP presidential primary, if he had thus not wittingly subverted the party consensus and instigated an internal crisis, Peter Obi would not have left the PDP, there would not have emerged the Obidient Current, at least not in the form that it emerged and evolved, and the Labour party would have remained as inconsequential in the 2023 general elections as it had been in previous elections.
The decisive phases in the capture and alteration of the political fate of the Labour party began with Atiku’s subversion of the PDP consensus, and crsytalised with the exit of Peter Obi from the PDP, and his clandestine entrance into the Labour Party.
In all of these however, and given the way things were unfolding within the Labour party, the labour party supporting left remained ominously silent. At least they did not openly speak up.
It begs the question of whether in the current situation, given the trajectory of the Labour Party, the the party is still redeemable and or salvageable. Can this party ever become a party of workers? Is there ever any chance that this party can be transformed into a proper workers party?
Results And Prospects:
Lessons have no doubt been learnt in the course of this engagement. These lessons need to be properly identified and mechanisms put in place to internalize them.
We were definitely right when we asserted that socialism was not on the agenda, and that a pro-massed agenda and program was neither on the ballot nor on the table in the 2023 general elections. All the parties and their candidates, including the labour party, and its presidential candidate pushed anti people, anti-worker, and blatantly and openly neoliberal programs and policy options.
The labour party went into the election not as a worker’s party, which it is not, and has come out of the elections even much further away from being a party of workers now than at any time in the past. Workers are still alienated from the party, and are not welcomed in the party. The control of the party is now shared between and among a motely crowd of political jobbers of various sorts, and the labour bureaucracy.
The left went into the election disorganized and scattered, and have not come out any better.
The project of building a mass workers party, with a socialist program, that is peopled by, owned by, and led by workers and the working people; and that has acquired the capacity for taking significant and decisive autonomous action, still stares us in the face. It is the most urgent task of the moment, and of the movement. Such mass political movement of the working people must organise intensely and massively among the workers, and it must be made up of and recruit deliberately and intentionally from amongst the working people. It must be workers party and movement not only in name, but in character, and by its membership and programs, and leadership.
A political movement that cannot field its own members for electoral contests, and that has to rely on borrowed and paying candidates, is not a political movement, nor is it ready to contest political elections, let alone take political power, and govern.
These are some of the most important lessons from our recent history.
Jaye Gaskia is a member of the CAST Nigeria Secretariat.
