LONDON—What the hell is going on in Nigeria?
Hundreds of school girls kidnapped, bombs are going off in different cities!
The impotent Nigerian government can’t put down the insurgency that is mobilized on many fronts — it has to call on white imperialist power for help!
Religious leaders are in crisis because everyone can see that they too, despite their vivid prayers, are powerless to stop the unfolding course of events.
Mobilized are millions of Africans throughout the world demanding the government to “bring back our girls.”
Boko Haram is suddenly world news and the imperialist media that brought “bring back our girls” all of a sudden care about African people.
What kind of crisis is this?
It is a crisis of impotence of the black neocolonialist governments!
Nkrumah called it the crisis of neo colonialism.
It is a direct result of the betrayal by the black neocolonial leaders of Nkrumah’s program to unite Africa into a single nation with one economy, one currency, one defense and one market. These leaders chose instead a fragmented Africa which will never have a collective purpose of achieving a real united economy, industry and military power in the world.
The Nigerian state was created to enrich the British white nation, and the handing over of flag independence to Nigeria under the leadership of the black petty bourgeoisie was designed to maintain the colonial status quo.
The 50-plus years of the treacherous alliance between African petty bourgeoisie and white imperialism is responsible for the conditions which created Boko Haram.
This alliance legitimizes the 24-seven theft of our materials, labour and human dignity.
This alliance surrendered Libya, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote D’Ivoire, Central Africa Republic, and South Sudan to U.S.-led white imperialism, and now it is Nigeria’s turn.
This does not mean that the rest of Africa’s so-called countries are independent. What I am pointing out is that these Negroes do not even defend their rights to run their flag-independent states.
Their armies and intelligence departments are being directly run by the white imperialists themselves.
The fact that there are reports which state that Boko Haram was trained in the Sahel region with weapons and money stolen from Libya after the overthrow and murder of Kaddafi underlines once again that the crisis of neocolonialism is a crisis of imperialism.
The crisis of neocolonialism should provide political advantage to the African working class and poor.
But with the absence of revolutionaries and a revolutionary movement in Nigeria and throughout the African nation, we are unable at this moment to deepen the crisis of this rotten parasitic capitalism.
However, with the growth of the African Socialist International, this is certain to change.
“Paris conference” legitimizes imperialist self-serving intervention in Africa
All crises and their multiple manifestations must be studied and understood so we can distinguish the secondary contradictions from the primary ones.
The British created the conditions for the secondary contradictions to obscure the primary ones.
Differences between religions, regions and ethnicities, under parasitic capitalism, are secondary contradictions between oppressed and poor peoples, often promoted by the African petty bourgeoisie to cover up for its own selfish petty bourgeois class material interests and alliances with white power rulers.
These contradictions can be surmounted through political education carried out by African internationalist revolutionaries.
Since the aggression against Africa by white enslavers over five hundred years ago, the imperialist white power nation has been, and still is, the primary enemy of the African nation and all oppressed peoples and nations all over the earth.
This contradiction between the oppressed African nation and the oppressor white nation is antagonistic by its very nature.
That is why we are vehemently opposed to any schemes and intervention which, directly or indirectly, legitimize white power imperialist presence on African soil and involvement in our affairs.
The May 17, 2014 so-called mini-summit in Paris, between French president François Hollande and five Negro presidents, respectively from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroun, Niger and Benin, as well as representatives of the United States, Great Britain and the European Union, was an imperialist summit designed to facilitate an imperialist agenda at the expense of the African nation.
Who gave Francois Holland the right to host a summit far away from Africa to solve problems in Africa?
On that day, the five Negro presidents publicly surrendered to the French “war plan”, against the Boko Haram group, which they described as a “terrorist sect” and a “major threat” to the stability of the region. But the fact is that 80 percent of the people in Nigeria live off $2.00 or less a day.
Boko Haram has nothing to do with this economic terrorism imposed on the people.
The only legitimate war in Africa is war for African national liberation, war to build a united socialist state of Africa.
That is war against the U.S.-led white nation and their allies, the African petty bourgeoisie and imperialists of all stripes.
France is aggressively looking to Africa to solve its imperialist crisis.
Just recently at an Africa-France mini-economic summit in December, Hollande called on French businesses to “double” their trade with Africa following a steady decline in France’s market share from 7.73 percent of exports and 9.08 percent of imports in 1960, to 2.8 percent and 2.05 percent respectively in 2011.
It is worth noting that Hollande attended this year, alongside 25 French imperialist businessmen, the insane February centenary celebration of the amalgamation of the northern and southern so-called British protectorates that is Nigeria today. This is what he said at that event:
“Nigeria is indeed the second country in the world towards which French champagne exports grow most quickly. In the more traditional sectors of French exports, the French group Lafarge is number two of cement in Nigeria, carried by the local building industry.”
Since the sixties, the U.S. and Britain have dominated the Nigerian oil industry. It’s not surprising then, that Britain too, is having its ministerial conference with Nigeria on Thursday, June 12, to ensure that its economic interest are not being left behind.
The U.S.-led white power intervention of Nigeria must be seen in the context of the shifting in the balance of power in the world.
China has become a formidable challenger to western imperialists for access and control of African energy and mineral resources.
The United States’ response to the challenge posed by China, Iran, Brazil and others in Africa is to achieve a hegemonic military control over Africa.
This will allow the U.S. rulers to determine who has access to the strategic mines and oil of Africa.
We must demand the immediate closure of all US Africom bases in Africa.
No U.S. and French troops in Africa!
U.S. imperialist power needs Boko Haram to forward its selfish interest at our expense
The bombings and mass killings that have all been attributed to or claimed by Boko Haram subsequent to the “girls” kidnapping, will not raise the consciousness of the people nor will they lead to revolutionary conclusions.
Rather, the U.S., France and UK ‘s intervention in Nigeria needs Boko Haram as the world’s bogey men, replacing bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
With a clear understanding that U.S.-led white power is the real biggest terrorist in the world, Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African Socialist International (ASI) sums up the significance of imperialism’s crisis for the U.S. ruling class in the world:
“The present attempt by the U.S. imperialists to recover from this crisis is an attempt to place the chains back on the unchained, and to build better padlocks for the chains of those of us still struggling for liberation. This is the only context within which it is permissible to view the present world situation that is characterized by desperate and frenzied U.S. and Western imperialism in the face of the freedom blows thrown by the oppressed.” Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Political Report to the 6th Congress, St. Petersburg, December 2013.
U.S. genocidal rulers, now represented by Barack Hussein Obama, need a functioning “war on terror” in Africa.
After white rulers create the the “bring our girls back” narrative, Boko Haram gives them the opportunity to promote war on terror and to win the sympathy of African people ourselves for a U.S. military intervention based on bogus information created by the CIA.
We call on Africans to expose and reject any attempt by imperialist powers and media to gain African sympathies for tragedies in Nigeria that can be placed on imperialism’s doorstep.
And everywhere else in the African world we call on the people to denounce imperialist intervention.
These interventions only promote white power as selfless rescuers of”infantile” black people.
We are calling on African people everywhere to organize, to demand the expulsion of all U.S. special operations forces from Africa. No permanent or temporary stationing of U.S. forces and their drones on our sacred African Soil.
Outrageous colonial conditions of living contribute to the creation of anti- government sentiment every where
Neocolonialism is war against the people, as clearly described below by the testimonies of African people in Nigeria.
Eradicate neocolonialism and you would eradicate Boko Haram too.
“We have no lights (electricity), no decent hospitals, no decent roads. I can’t pay school fees or put enough food on the table. And now I can’t work,” said an exhausted taxi driver and father of five, Bola Ogunlesi, in a line for gas on Lagos’ Ikoyi Island. (Vancouversun.com)
Speaking against this background, the former Secretary General of the Nigerian Commonwealth, Emeka Anyaoku, said Nigerian roads have become “a huge slaughter slab, where lives appear to be worth little or nothing.”
Anyaoku maintained that “Nigerian roads are worse than the ones found in war-torn countries like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, among others” (Deplorable conditions of Nigerian roads, Tuesday, May 13, 2014, Daily Independent).
This is an everyday situation for the vast majority of people in Nigeria today, while the tiny minority African petty bourgeoisie live in luxury with some hundreds of billions of dollars in oil money stolen from the people.
And even this is a tiny fraction of what the imperialists have looted from the people’s resources.
Nigeria is a country that produces and sells 2.2 million barrels of oil a day, but suffers from oil scarcity.
The government is forced to import refined oil from the same corporations it sells crude oil to at astronomical rates.
These same companies have power over all key sectors of the Nigerian state—from the presidency to the military.
The infant mortality rate for children in Nigeria is some 600 deaths for every 100,000 births, compared to Libya under Qaddafi which was 39 deaths for every 100,000 births.
Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, and Uganda account for nearly 50% of the global malaria deaths.
Almost 1 out of 5 deaths of children under 5 in Africa are due to malaria terrorism.
About 120, 000 children under 5 die every year in Africa because of malaria.
We are not even talking about the rest of curable diseases which have laid siege on children’s lives.
The government does not pay its doctors.
According to allafrica.com, “The doctors went on strike over non-payment of arrears of salaries. Some doctors had not been paid for over four months by the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System.
Similarly, premiumtimesng.com informs us that The country has only 600 pediatricians to care for its over 40 million children, compared to the United Kingdom’s over 5,000 pediatricians for 20 million children.”
Although there is corruption through and through, government officials who steal the wealth of the country are never prosecuted.
Just a few months ago, the Central Bank governor Lamido Sanusi alleged that some $20 billion in oil revenues is missing from state funds.
He was, of course fired by President Goodluck Jonathan. Up to now, no one has been arrested for the alleged theft of these national resources.
If you check the list of 50 of Nigeria‘s billionaires on the internet, almost every one of them began their thieving careers by stealing from the state or national asset coffers.
Political rise of Boko Haram is clear evidence of the crisis of neocolonialism
Despite years of violence against the people in Nigeria, the white imperialist media never conducted a propaganda war against Boko Haram up until now.
Why has the media focused on Boko Haran now?
The reason the U.S. media wanted the world to know now about Boko Haram is the same reason they wanted the world to know about Joseph Koni’s alleged atrocities in Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo: because the U.S. wants the world’s sympathies so that it can forward U.S. interests by sending more U.S. soldiers and “intelligence” personnel to Africa to militarily seize resources.
From its beginning in Maiduguri, Borno state in about 2002, Boko Haram has been a petty bourgeois obscurantist organization.
It was created with the consent and help of the Nigerian petty bourgeoisie itself.
The group attracted children from wealthy families such as ”the son of Yobe’s governor at the time, Bukar Abba Ibrahim. Bukar Abba Ibrahim is now a senator, and his son’s involvement meant that the group was “immune from punishment” (Cheta Nwanze, A Short History of Boko Haram).
While we recognize and fight for the freedom of religion, we must point out that we are not fighting for creation of an Ummah or to hand over power to the emirs, sheiks, imams, etc.
African internationalists are fighting for a united African nation where production, distribution and ownership of production will be in the hands of workers and revolutionary national democratic forces that may include religious representatives.
Boko Haram’s calls for the creation of Ummah and imposition of Sharia law are outdated demands which belong to obscurantist petty bourgeois forces who intend to dominate and exploit workers.
“Between 2004 and 2009 Boko Haram was largely left alone, and grew as a movement. In that time, they started a farm, provided employment for their members, provided welfare for those members who could not work, and gave training to those who could. In short, they provided an alternative to the government, and this viability attracted more members, and a lot of zakat donations (charitable money) from prominent members of the Northern elite. In July in 2009, Boko Haram‘s leader, Mohammed Yusuf was summarily executed by the Nigerian army…” (Cheta Nwanze, A Short Story of Boko Haram).
The failure of the neocolonialist state to take care of the people provided the material conditions for Boko Haram to exist and grow.
Boko Haram is a petty bourgeois organization fighting for access to neocolonial power, which is based on attacks on the people and, ultimately, peace with imperialism.
Their demand of imposition of Sharia law in northern Nigeria does not change the reality that northern Nigeria is dominated by imperialism too.
There are already 12 states in Nigeria which have adopted Sharia law.
Boko Haram‘s tactics of terror against the people reveal their petty bourgeois class character.
This is why African workers, poor peasants, and all progressive forces in society must mobilize and create institutions to defend the people.
Poor soldiers and police men and women must be politicized and organized to join the national liberation struggle against the alliance of the imperialist and petty bourgeoisie.
Boko Haram cannot be separated from the power struggle between factions of the African petty bourgeoisie for control of state power and oil revenues.
There are people in the North who see the presidency of Goodluck as a sign of the decline of the North’s influence in neocolonial Nigeria.
The work of Boko Haram is part of that power struggle to force Goodluck and other non-North representatives of the Nigeria petty bourgeoisie to agree to the rotation of power—that is, the next president of Nigeria must be from the North.
Boko Haram is not against imperialism.
Up to this day in their over ten years of existence, they have not targeted Western interests in Nigeria or in the region, where the Western domination is overwhelming.
Boko Haram seems to be a highly equipped and well armed group.
We already know that the U.S., UK, and French imperialists, along with the Arab petty bourgeoisie in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf States, financed jihadist mercenaries against the Soviet Union, and recently against Qaddafi in Libya and against Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
After the British granted flag independence to Nigeria in 1960, the African petty bourgeoisie, a minority social class, trained and groomed by white power rulers, came to power in Nigeria.
They have since exercised power in agreement with imperialist rulers at the expense of the African nation.
The foreign parasitic oil companies, who control the economy of Nigeria, rely on this minority petty bourgeois social class and their repressive governments to keep people exploited and oppressed.
If you are the host of a parasitic economy, you must have a repressive government and corrupt ruling class.
It does not matter if it is elected or not.
If it is parliamentary or presidential neocolonial government, it has to be a government of repressive and terrorist violence against the people.
The British colonial rulers created and set the long term direction of the colonial army in Nigeria, which used to be part of the West African Frontier Forces (WAFF), similar to East African Kings Rifles in East Africa.
It was primarily created to protect British interests from a French incursion, and the African masses.
They provided cannon fodder for the British during the second imperialist war so that the British could maintain their imperial status in regions like India, Burma, Morocco, Sicily etc.
The Nigerian colonial army was put in place to subdue parts of the African population who were still in resistance against the British rule.
“This army was deliberately created according to the principle of divide and rule; it was made up 70% from the North, of which 66% were Hausa-Fulani”(”The Nigerian Military and the State,” Jim Peters).
In the populous North, the British promoted the power of the Emirs, while denying the masses access to public education.
“Despite its larger population than the South’s, by 1947, the North accounted for only 2.5% of primary school enrolment. It had less than 10% of primary schools and less than 5 % of secondary school at independence. By 1960, there were only 57 people from the North at the university college, Ibadan, out of a student population of over a thousand “(”The Nigerian Military and the State”, Jim Peters).
Where is the outcry of Michelle Obama or the white press when African girls and women have been raped daily on a horrific scale in Congo for 20 years by Rwanda and Uganda armies funded and trained by U.S. and UK imperialists? One solution! Replace a neocolonial Nigerian state with a revolutionary national democratic African state. We cannot just condemn the Boko Haram kidnapping.
There is a template already set by the “Atlantic slave trade “: the British and the U.S. modern governments were born of kidnapping African people, including girls, for hundreds of years!
They live off kidnapping!
Nigeria has been kidnapped by Shell, Exxon Chevron, Total and the other parasitic oil companies.
The struggle against terrorism is a struggle against U.S.-led imperialism. Turn the struggle against terrorism into a revolutionary national democratic struggle under the leadership of the African working class.
Forward to the final offensive for the eradication of the African petty bourgeoisie comprador and bureaucratic class, the strategic ally of parasitic capitalism.
The creation of the African Socialist International, an all-African revolutionary party, is a precondition for a successful revolution anywhere in Africa.
The ASI, in its essence, is the African plan for the African revolution.
Any revolution anywhere in the African nation must defeat all illegitimate imperialist borders.
The struggle in Nigeria is a choice between Berlin-created illegitimate micro-states and a single revolutionary African nation state.
We need the creation of a single revolutionary media apparatus which will be able to speak to the African nation and to the world in our own terms and interests.
The comprador class exists in Africa as an ally of imperialism, as an appendix of foreign interests.
It does not exist as an independent class.
That is why Jonathan Goodluck can work with Francois Hollande, who is killing Africans in Central African Republic, and in Mali, and in Haiti.
African blood is on the hands of the white power imperialists who Jonathan often has dinner with, while refusing, at least publicly, to negotiate with Boko Haram.
Stop all violence against the people!
Smash African petty bourgeois comprador rule!
Africom and French troops out of Africa! Power in the hands of the workers and peasants!
Build the African Nation! Raise high African nationality!
Build the African Socialist International!
