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Wage Labour and the Politics of Nigeria and Kenya: A Comparative Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

C. Onyeka Nwanunobi
C. Onyeka Nwanunobi*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Extract

Eskor Toyo's suggestion during his review of the 1966 crisis in Nigeria that the working class should not limit its politics to supporting others but should wage a struggle for power in its own right and on its own plank (1966, p. 34) raised anew the issue of the role of the working class in Nigeria's politics. The suggestion, as it stands, implies a criticism of the role the workers had played in politics and recommends a new line of action. The timing was perfect, for it would seem that, to adopt the new line, all that the working class needed to do was to step into the vacuum created by the decree which banned the existing political parties after the military coup of January 1966. The problem, however, was that, to grab political power for the working class, the workers would have needed to organise and emerge as a demonstrable political force and would thereby automatically have come under the ban and have faced confrontation with the army; hence perhaps Toyo chose the words to “wage a struggle for power.” After all, the army was then getting used to the power it had seized a few months before and would not have given it up without a fight. But the problem for the working class was even more complicated than the impediment represented by the army. This had not to do with the workers being inexperienced in the art of governing, for, as Toyo pointed out, the army had never ruled in Nigeria before 1966 and, as far as anyone could see, the situation was still far from anarchy. Governing, it seems, is one of those arts one acquires on the job.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , April 1974 , pp. 77 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1974

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References

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