Stop the Bloody Crackdown on Nigeria Protests!

Over the past six days, hundreds of thousands of youth and unemployed have taken to the streets across Nigeria to protest the imperialist-dictated shock therapy which has led to economic catastrophe including widespread starvation. In response the government of Bola Tinubu is unleashing a bloody crackdown. Police repeatedly open fire with live ammunition, already killing anywhere between 13 and 50 protesters and injuring many more. State agents are hunting down protest organisers and journalists. It is urgently necessary for workers here and everywhere to demand an end to the murderous repression. Free all protesters and journalists, now!

What can stay the government’s bloody hand, and turn the tide against neoliberal austerity, is the social power of the organised working class—including crucially workers in the imperialist centres. Revolutionaries and workers in Nigeria must fight for the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress federations to place themselves at the head of the protests. This is the best way to push forward the demands of the youth and unemployed, and it is in the direct interest of every NLC and TUC member. Similarly, the workers movement of South Africa has a vital stake in the victory of the protests. Every blow the Nigerian masses are able to inflict against the Tinubu regime and the imperialist masters, will strengthen our ability to fight the same imperialists here. Everyone knows the neoliberal onslaught is only going to increase under the new right-wing ANC-DA coalition. A struggle here in support of the Nigerian protests is also the best way to cut through the Randlords’ divide-and-rule pitting black South Africans against immigrants from Nigeria and the rest of the continent (the poisonous campaign against Miss SA candidate Chiddima Adetshina being just the latest example).

The Kenyan youth struck the first blow by successfully forcing the William Ruto government to repeal its IMF-dictated tax laws. To really turn the tide and build a movement to defeat the imperialist stranglehold of the African continent, what’s needed is a fight for revolutionary working-class leadership. The struggles for democracy, national liberation and socio-economic development are constantly undermined and sabotaged as long as they remain under the leadership of the nationalist elites.

From Lagos to Nairobi, from Cairo to the Cape, we must fight, now:

• Down with the crackdown against the #DaysofRage protests!
• Re-instate the fuel subsidy! Down with austerity!
• Repudiate the debt to the imperialist bloodsuckers!
• Nationalise the oil fields, refineries, mines and all imperialist assets!
• For communist leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle!