The Crisis Of Buharism; Part One



A typical Buharist line goes like this: "General Muhammadu Buhari is an embodiment of integrity and incorruptibility, a saviour of the nation; his program of war against indiscipline and corruption during the military era was a model of how to run a backward country like Nigeria, at least at that time. The political establishment or the conservative wing of the bourgeoisie fiercely fight this saint-like personality overthrowing him in a military coup in the past and now ganging up to rig elections and launch vicious propaganda against him so as to prevent him from ever ruling the country again."

This typical Buharist (as adherents of Buhari are fondly called) line sees Buharism as an unbreakable personal record of honesty and integrity coming against powerful and vested interests of the corrupt elite. This is the position Marxists call historical subjectivism whereby concrete historical conditions are abstracted and the role of personality is given a primary focus.

In this write up, I will establsih not only the dominance of objective conditions in determining the development of Buharism, but we will also show that Buharism, far from being a static and fixed personal attributes of integrity and honesty, the movement had undergone a remarkable and qualitative historical transformation; Buharism eventually turned to its very historical opposite.

Buharism has become known as a movement around the personality of General Muhammadu Buhari; it has not always been the same. At a point, it was a military dictatorship resting largely on the military bureaucracy, a movement terminated by General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Recently, it is a liberal bourgeois movement resting on the mostly Northern and Muslim petty bourgeois masses. This article and the Part Two which will come later, trace the historical development of Buharism and what the future holds for the movement.

Let us start with the person of General Buhari. The primary concern of Marxists is not the purity of the man's heart nor what goes inside his head. Our primary concern is what is the class of the General? He is a bourgeois, a member of the ruling class. This fact, the bourgeois existence of Buhari, is the most important determinant of the man's consciounsess i.e. his politics; we must never lose sight of this fact.

Does this mean Marxists dismiss the role of personality and leadership in shaping history? Absolutely not. So what is the role of Buhari the person in the historical process? Historical forces create a range of abstract possibilities while historical personalities make one or more of these possibilities a concrete inevitability. In this article, we will explain how Buhari made/makes history within the limits set by historical laws.

Buharism as a Bonapartist Dictatorship

What were the objective conditions under which Buhari the dictator emerged? Due to both the decay of global and Nigerian capitalism and failure of Nigerian working class to capture power and build socialism, the country was forced to pass through the experience of bourgeois Bonapartist coup and counter-coup and the fascist Igbo pogroms and civil war. The oil boom of 1970 s enabled Gowon/Murtala/Obasanjo Bonaparto-fascist class to re-establish stability. Indigenization/nationalization of foreign companies, creation of a stable centralized bureaucracy, massive investment drive in infrastructure, industry and agriculture, Federal Character Principle and doling out economic largesse to states and tribes; these are all signs of a bourgeois new-found confidence in carrying out the tasks of bourgeois democratic national liberation/unification revolution. Yearly revenue from oil stood at US$22.4 billion by 1980. It accounted for 90% of the nation's source of foreign exchange and almost the same proportion of Government revenue. This financed the above-mentioned investments as as well as imports of raw materials, spare parts and food. Imports were especially cheap because of the pressure on Naira by petro-dollars inflows, a process augmented by deliberate Naira overvaluation by the Nigerian government.

But even with this confidence, the Gowon/Murtala/Obasanjo regime could not afford to ignore the Nigerian labour movement. Using the Adebiyi Tribunal of 1976, the Murtala Muhammad dictatorship dissolved Nigerian Labour Congress and created a new one with the same name under the leadership of Hassan Sunmonu, a senior member of the conservative civil service union. The military also banned from trade unionism prominent labour leaders like Michael Imoudu, S.U. Bassey and Wahab Goodluck for life. Additionally, the 1979 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Chapter V1, Part III Section D Sub-section 201 states inter alia that “no association other than a political party shall canvass for votes for any candidate at any election Or contribute to the funds of any political party or to the election expenses of any candidate at an election”. This effectively blocked Nigerian working class and NLC from forming and funding their own party. (Okonkwo Eze)

Booming (oil) economy, unprecedented accumulation of wealth in the hands of few ruling elites for investment, import and patronage, widening gap between rich and poor, increased cost of living with sticky wages and a politically smashed Nigerian working class; these were the objective conditions at the end of 70s. It is not that there was no class struggle or splits among the ruling class. In fact, the dissolution of NLC, life ban on leading labour personalities and the 1978 struggle of Sunmonu-led NLC for minimum wage legislation were clear signs of intense class struggle in those years. But the 70s, compared to the preceding 60s and the coming 80s, were periods of bourgeois confidence. An ultimate sign of this confidence i.e. bourgeois parliamentary democracy followed with the birth of the Second Republic.

The Shagari civilian regime continued with the military's previous effort of smashing the political power of Nigerian working class. This time around by creating, funding and backing a reactionary NLC faction led by David Ojeli. The workers successfully defeated this divide and rule tactic in February 1981 NLC conference in Kano and Sunmonu emerged as NLC president.

A decisive event that will shape the subsequent historical events was the May 1981 2-day general strike led by NLC under the leadership of Hassan Sunmonu. The reason of the strike was a raise in minimum wage, to which Shagari eventually conceeded and unilaterally raised the minimum wage from N120 to N125. The political significance of the strike was the fact the Nigerian working class had recovered from the previous blows and was now a power to reckon with.

Then came the oil glut and worldwide recession of the 1980s. In 1980, the oil output of Nigeria was 2million barrels per day and the revenue accrued from oil stood at US$22.4 billion. From mid- 1981 , oil output started to decline and by 1983 it had dropped to less than 1million barrels per day and revenues dropped to US$9.6 billion. Of this, US$5.5 billion was supposed to go to debt servicing owed by Nigeria to private international banks (most are trade credits financing imports). The US$8 billion in foreign exchange was virtually wiped out by the end of 1983. Only US$2 billion were available for financing the imports of 1984, estimated to be US$7.6 billion. Food imports alone (mainly from United States) would engulf US$2.5 billion. Nigeria was heading for an economic collapse.

So under the first tenure of Shagari, the objective conditions of 1970s had turned to their very opposite: oil revenues had drastically reduced, pressure on Naira was off (only kept high by artificial overvaluation), investments, imports and patronages could not be paid, inflation had reached as high as 50% and the working class was proudly on its feet. Nigerian capitalism was once again facing the existential threat of proletarian-led revolution.

The crisis threw both the Nigerian bourgeoisie and their imperialist masters in London and New York into panic. Splits among the ruling classes intensified; international creditors were demanding interest and loan payments, foreign multinational oil companies asking for more profits to offset the effect of inflation, import traders complaining of dearth of letters of credit and trade loan, industrialists struggling from scarcity of imported raw materials and spare parts and opposition bourgeoisie crying of marginalization from the national cake. Working class in various sectors from teachers, doctors, nurses and power workers were fighting for better working conditions and strikes became more frequent. Petty bourgeois artisans and traders in cities were agitating too under the crushing weight of inflation. The conditions of socialist revolution had matured.

What was the response of imperialism and Shagari-led national bourgeoisie? Austerity, cuts in public spending and import restriction. Cuts in public spending meant wage freeze and massive retrenchment of public sector workers. Import restriction meant scarcity of imported raw materials and spare parts for industries therefore closure of the latter and hence massive retrenchment of private sector employees. The solution proposed by the Shagari-led bourgeois regime and the imperialist was thus massive attack on the Nigerian workers and poor. This meant an intensification of class struggle that threatened first the Nigerian capitalism. But the imperialists, as represented by IMF, wanted the Nigerian bourgeoisie to accelerate the rate and intensity of such attacks through devaluation of Naira and phasing out of subsidies. These two acts would lead to an even higher inflation and make food and spare parts imports more expensive. Such escalation of attacks was considered by the Shagari regime to be too risky. This created a rift between imperialism and national bourgeoisie; thus a subjective (leadership) crisis for the Nigerian bourgeoisie complicated the objective (economic) crisis. At that moment, there was no way out of the crisis.

Then Buhari-led Supreme Military Council struck. Buhari-led coup was not revolutionary or even progressive in any way. It was an attempt of the top army officers (a section of the bourgeoisie) to save Nigerian capitalism. As Buhari himself repeated in several interviews, it was not that Shagari did not know what to do (meaning attack on the masses) but he had no will to do it. In this sense, Buhari regime was a bourgeois Bonpartist solution to the economic and political crisis. Shagari's "democratic" tactics were replaced by Buhari's dictatorial tactics; the bourgeois strategy i.e. cuts in public spending, retrenchment of workers, closure of industries etc remained the same. Buhari-led Military junta came to take away the democratic fighting tools of workers such as free press, right unionize and strike and electoral accountability. Stripped of their democratic rights, workers and poor would be defenceless and bourgeois attacks would be easier. This was the historical task of Buhari then, a task he carried out with much diligence.

Dr Musa Bashir is a Marxist Activist. He writes in from Kano

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