[Within the decaying system of "international capitalism Nigeria…]

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Within the decaying system of "international capitalism Nigeria is assuming increasing importance for imperialism.

The depression of world trade means an ever more urgent search for new markets, and Nigeria with its large population and its revenue from oil exports is a prime candidate.

And through its dominating position in the Economic Organization of West African States (ECOWAS) Nigeria can act on behalf of imperialism in opening up and developing new markets for Western commodities and technology at the same time as building the power of the local bourgeoisie.

Grievances Furthermore, as workers and peasants in the semi-colonial countries move into deeper struggles in which grievances over national oppression have combined with resistance to economic attacks by imperialism and its agents, imperialism attempts to further bolster agents in those states whose economic and military strength can be used in an attempt to impose neo colonial solutions to oppressed peoples' struggles. Here, imperialism has used Nigeria's influence over the petty-bourgeois nationalist movements.

Behind Obasanjo's "radical" public stance over the liberation struggles in Zimbabwe and Namibia he has been foremostwith the leaders of the 'frontline' states-in acting as imperialism's broker in attempting to persuade the nationalist leaderships-the Patriotic Front and SWAPO-to accept an imperialist-manoeuvred neo-colonialist settlement.

No doubt Obasanjo-or his civilian successor-would also be more than willing to lend some of his huge army to supervise the consolidation of a stable bourgeois nationalist government in Zimbabwe; to help ensure, that is, that no independent revolutionary mobilisations of the workers and peasants occurs.

Attractive

The relative economic strength and the military power commanded by the Nigerian financial-military • nexus has made it particularly attractive as an agent to imperialism at a time when it faces a growing crisis of political stability of agents..

But the Nigerian ruling class has also to face the challenge of its own exploited masses. The present series of elections, to provide a 'democratic' successor when the military dictators return to barracks in October, are designed, as we argued in the last article, as a bid to stabilise capitalist rule in the state.

The army will be closely watching, ready to impose martial order, while the civilian bourgeois government seeks to make the workers and poor farmers pay for capitalist crises.

Crisis

Nigeria has suffered with the rest of the underdeveloped states the strongest effects of the : present acute phase of capitalist crisis, despite the oil production which counts for up to 90% of its exports.

The development of capitalism as a world system means that in Nigeria, as in the larger part of the world, the small industrial sector is condemned to submit to the Nigerian peasant farmer demands and the limits made by the 'foreign' capital which subordinates and controls the Meanwhile the agricultural sector is in a state of near-chaos. This has reached the point where food imports are continually increasing and Nigeria is now a net importer of a number of products in which it used to be self sufficient or of which it was even an exporter.

The approximately 65% of the population directly dependent on the land-mostly poor subsistence farmers-bear the heaviest burden of the failures of an unplanned underdeveloped agriculture.

The projected solution of the Nigerian ruling class to the agrarian crisis seems to be to rob the peasants of their land and attempt to introduce mechanized, large-scale, capitalist farming. Some legislation to this end has already been introduced.

Revolutionaries must convince the peasants and rural workers that the only real solution in their interests to the consequences of agricultural under-development is the nationalisation of the land and voluntary collectivisation within a planned socialist economy.

Exploitation

The capitalist development of agriculture to the extent that it is feasible, holds for the poor farmer only increased exploitation and misery:

An unfortunate consequence for the ruling class of their agrarian plan. would be to increase the flight of hungry peasants to the towns, where there is already large unemployment.

The urban working class, like the peasantry, is indeed being made to pay crisis-ridden imperialism's running costs through unemployment, reductions in government spending and the military dictatorship's anti-working class measures and austerity programme-including a rigid pay policy which is cutting back the proletariat's already Tow standard of living.

Nigeria now runs a negative trade balance, and an annual inflation rate of at least 30%.

The 1975-1980 five year plan, envisaging rapid industrial development, based on unfulfilled hopes of greatly increased oil production, failed to take into account the facts of capitalist crisis, the subordination of the Nigerian economy to those of the imperialist exploiters, and the requirements of foreign capitalists who do not always see things in quite the same way as their very junior bourgeois nationalist partners.

Supportive cogs

The military government's loudly announced legislation to 'indigenise' capital was intended to create a strong independent national bourgeoisie.

However it has done little to change the essential situation whereby most local capitalists are allowed little more than the chance to act as small supportive cogs in the enormous imperialist machinery which squeezes profits from workers of all countries and deposits them in the ample laps of the imperialist exploiters.

Nigeria remains for these beneficiaries, as the Financial Times succinctly indicates, a 'business opportunity' lone, we may add, with the military and economic influence to maintain and improve 'opportunities' in other parts of Africa too).

"What makes it attractive as business opportunity is its large population which forms a the Muzorewa-Smith regime, threatening to cancel contracts with Britain.

The basis of this is not, however, solidarity with the Zimbabwean masses but rather the economic crisis which has led Obasanjo since 1977 to impose stringent import controls and drastically cut down on contracts.

As they reduce spending and jobs, the Nigerian government, military or civilian, will now cynically try to present their austerity programmes to the working class as "economic sanctions" against the The Elections.

As we argued in the last article, victory in the present series of elections (for state and federal legisiatures, state governors, a President and a Senate, in a governmental structure modelled on that of the USA) will certainly lead to a government of the ruling class to take over from the military the task of stabilising bourgeois dictatorship in Nigeria..

There is very little political difference, even on a superficial level, between the five contesting parties.

Their propaganda only stresses different aspects of the mystical economic-political amalgam of "Neither East nor West, neither capitalist nor socialist" one of the presidential candidates puts it.

Disqualified

Behind this absurd formulation lies a common strategy for maintaining Nigeria as a source of imperialist profit and as imperialism's left-barking guard dogs (a bark far more 'left' than Nnamdi Azikiwe Waziri Ibrahim radical nationalist who showed his true reactionary face as the First Republic's President.

Obafemi Owolowo, another old nationalist, has led his Unity Party of Nigeria to do somewhat better, though its strength is largely tied to areas in which the Yoruba are the dominant tribe.

At present it looks likely that Shehu Shagari's National Party of Nigeria will emerge as the leading governmental force.

The peasants who starve in the countryside or come to hunger, unemployment and overcrowded conditions in the cities, will no doubt share with the proletariat warm appreciation of Shagari's explanation of the value of professional qualifications:

"| am a farmer and a teacher. My running mate is an accomplished architect. This emphasises the commitment of the NPN to food and shelterour emblem."

We can be quite confident that Shagari and the NPN bureaucracy will lack neither.

And Shagari shows a clear understanding of the role of the army once the generals in government have been replaced by him and his friends.

"We shall build" , he says, "a strong, well equipped and well-trained armed forces capable of deterring and terminating aggression from without and of discouraging insurrection from within."

Again we can be sure that the 'external aggression' to which he refers is not that of imperialist bankers and capitalists, and that 'aggression from within' means the struggles of the workers and peasants against exploitation.

Obafemi Awolowo Shehu Shagari However, after the handover in October, the civilian bourgeois government will no doubt meet resistance to its continuation of the repressive policies of the military bourgeois dictatorship with threats of a return to government by the generals.

In this strategy of attempting to tighten the bourgeois-democratic noose it will certainly be ably assisted by the Stalinist and reformist labour bureaucracies.

Bankruptcy It is the task of revolutionaries to expose to the masses who participated in the election the bankruptcy of 'democratic" bourgeois nationalism.

This must be done through the fight for independent working class interests, for independent trade unions and an independent workers party.

Only in this way can the ruling class's anti-working class and anti-peasant policies be combatted.

Nigerian students not long ago took to the streets in bloody fights against the regime and they, too, like the workers and peasants will face continued repression.

But, as Trotsky states in The Permanent Revolution:

"to lead the masses of the people to victory over the bloc of the imperialists, the feudalists and the national bourgeoisiethis can only be done under the revolutionary hegemony of the proletariat, which transforms itself after the seizure of power into the dictatorship of the proletariat."

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WRP leaders junk the old