According to him, the promise of independence has remained unfulfilled after 63 years because of the replacement of colonialism by neo-colonialism.
A member of TPAP-M Campaign for Socialist Transformation of Nigeria, Omotoye Olorode, has said that colonial imperialists in collaboration with Nigerian conspirators have continued to suffocate and suppress Nigeria’s working class after 63 years of independence.
Olorode in his Nigeria’s 63rd Independence Celebration message titled ‘Nigeria @63: Uniting Working People’s Perspectives on the Evolution and Development of Nigeria (Colonial and Post-Colonial Nigeria)—Setting the Records Straight,’ said that internal and external forces had maintained neo-colonialism in Nigeria and continued to reproduce exploitation, poverty and disunity among the working class in the country.
According to him, the World Bank, the IMF and related Bretton Woods institutions have “become more and more blatant and more audacious, seconding their agents and employees to Nigeria and other former colonies like Nigeria as ministers, technocrats and ‘advisers!’ That is exactly what had happened to Nigeria in the last twenty years especially”.
“That is where we still are! That is the foundation of the current neocolonial control from the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) in the early 1980s, and entrenched on fresh illusions like Vision 2010, Vision 2020, NEPAD, NEEDS, MDG, SDG, etc.
“It is the foundation of the permanent social and economic crisis that had been imposed on countries like Nigeria,” he said.
According to him, the promise of independence has remained unfulfilled after 63 years because of the replacement of colonialism by neo-colonialism.
He said the colonial authorities who seemed to have left the country still retained economic and elements of political power without responsibility.
He said, “The theme of our discussion in this 63rd Anniversary of the independence of Nigeria assumes, correctly, that the unity of working-class people, Nigeria’s working class, is a required condition for carrying out the struggle for the development of Nigeria: for creating conditions for satisfying the economic social and cultural needs of the masses of working people and for building a future that is pivoted on the agency and autonomy of the masses of our people, their security, solidarity, freedom and equality.
“The theme assumes the imperative of the sovereignty of our country and people. These were all issues that underscored anti-colonial struggles and erected the promises of independence.
“With regard to the aspirations of our people in the anti-colonial struggles, and notwithstanding some of the post-independence gains, the promise of independence had remained unfulfilled after sixty-three years because of the replacement of colonialism by neo-colonialism.
“Decolonisation was, as we observe below, a tactical necessity for colonising powers to enable exploitation of colonised territories continue.”
“The departing colonial authorities retained economic and elements of political power without responsibility, to paraphrase Kwame Nkrumah and as the current spate of coups d’état in some the French sub-Saharan neo-colonies amply exemplifies,” Olorode said.
He further noted that the matter of “setting the records straight” underscores the need for Nigeria’s working people to be on the same page regarding the forces and processes that have checkmated the promises of independence; the internal and external forces that have continued to reproduce exploitation, poverty and disunity among the working class.
According to Olorode, the evolution of the political structure of Nigeria was shaped by the administrative convenience of the colonial authorities and their indigenous collaborators.
He said, “Similarly, the templates, especially of economic development, was laid more than a decade before independence by external imperialist forces that have retained their hegemony since then; again in collaboration with indigenous forces of exploitation.
“Only a deepened struggle of the victims of the current unending hardships of capitalism can build the conditions for a new society. And only those who actually bring about that new society can, and will be able to defend, defend it.”
