The Capitalist Niger Pdf Download
Itaete Roberson
Insecurity has been the main excuse put forward by the putschists in the whole of the Sahel, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and now in Niger. ECOWAS, through its current head Bola Tinubu, president of Nigeria, issued a one-week ultimatum for the junta headed by Abdourahamane Tchiani to hand over power back to the ousted leader still under house arrest in the presidential villa. The one-week deadline is gone. The question of a military invasion of Niger to restore bourgeois democracy has become the order of the day, with Tinubu forwarding a letter to the Senate seeking approval for the Nigerian military to go to war. Even with the military regimes in Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso issuing statements to the fact that any invasion of Niger on the above account is a declaration of war against them as well, they will not watch events hands Akimbo.
We are, therefore, likely faced with the possibility of war in the Sahel, which in all terms will also turn out a proxy war both for French imperialism and its Western allies backing Nigeria and other ECOWAS allied forces on one side and against Niger, with Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and the Wagner mercenary group, and possible also China on the other side. All of these forces represent their own imperialist ends. This could inevitably set up the Sahel region as a new front in the New Cold War already seen raging on for one and half years in Ukraine.
The MSA categorically opposes the war in Niger and calls on the workers and the trade unions in Nigeria to commence a campaign of opposing the Tinubu regime, sending Nigerian troops to Niger. This very call must be extended to all of the ECOWAS countries, with workers not only stating their opposition to any military invasion of Niger but as well as organising themselves to fully take their destiny into their own hands by coming into the arena of struggle, and providing leadership for the whole of the working masses inclusive of the rank and file of the military and the police in a struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
A majority of these discontented younger officers, in carrying their coups, blamed the state of insecurity on the overthrown rulers for not providing the necessary wherewithal and weapons with which to effectively prosecute and combat the growing state of insecurity fueled by Jihadists insurgency in the form of various Islamic militant groups with links and support from Al-Qaeda and ISIS in the Middle-east, not excluding Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria as well. In so doing, the coupists in the Sahel region are merely reducing the question of Islamic insurgency to just a military question. But the efforts of these new rulers in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, even with the support of the Wagner mercenary group, have not, to date, declared a complete victory of them.
It will also be completely wrong to locate it within the fervent for a new messianic desire to espouse and extend the frontiers of Islam by the various Islamic Jihadist groups. At the heart of it is the question of poverty that a majority of the people in Africa are condemned into. And as well as the failure of the ruling elites since flag independence to develop the means of production with which to cater for the needs of the working masses and youths on the African continent.
Flag independence has done nothing whatsoever to reorder the established colonial arrangement that initially condemned Africa to the lowest rung of the capitalist world order as a haven of producing raw material for the industrial West, inclusive of China now, no more, no less. A situation which denies Africa the opportunity to take control of its wealth and resources and employ the same to meet the needs and aspirations of Africans themselves. It follows, therefore, that without taking on capitalism and imperialism, a system that allows for the private domination of the wealth of society by a few, both locally and internationally, Africa will continue to crawl, moving from one crisis to the other despite its enormous wealth and resources.
This new wave of successful coups has also been heralded by a growing anti-France sentiment, with the new rulers evicting French troops from their territories. The 400 French Special Forces left Burkina Faso following a one-month notice in January 2023 to vacate. Last year, French troops under the Barkhane unit withdrew from Mali. In June, Col. Assimi Goita, the head of the Malian Junta, ordered the 12,000 peacekeeping troops in Mali to leave as well. French troops have also left the Central African Republic. On the heels of this withdrawal is a mass protest in these countries lashed with anti-French sentiments largely over their ineffectiveness in helping combat the insurgency. Side by side with is also pro-Russia sentiments. But attention is now on Niger, where 1,500 French troops are also located. Will the bug bite next in Niger, and after then, where next?
It is this huge anti-French sentiment that explains why France agrees to withdraw her troops from Mali andd Burkina Faso, where earlier coups occurred. Any military intervention will also not just be confronting the Tchiani-led junta in Niger but also the teeming population of the working masses on the streets in their millions in support of the coup, who will bring pressure to bear on the regime for the withdrawal of French troops .
Marxists must be at the forefront in pointing out that this contradiction of huge abundant mineral resources that cannot be employed to meet the needs of the working masses is largely because it is extracted to enrich a few who front for big business locally and internationally. Added to the above is the dictate of both micro and macroeconomic policies by the IMF and World Bank, and other International Financial Institutions for the purpose of ensuring that the state plays no role whatsoever in taking control of the wealth of society.
And as long as this is the situation, the goal of constant and regular electricity supply and steel production, all key essentials for industrialisation and developing the means of production in the direction to meet the needs of the working masses as opposed to tending to the greed for profit by big business will not occur. This conscious act on the part of the IMF and World Bank aims to ensure that Western and Chinese imperialism are not rivalled and continue to be the only industrial base of the universe while Latin America and Africa continue to be the market for manufactured goods.
The above can only mean that the Wagner group and Russia are not engaged in any charity or philanthropic military venture. The Wagner group does not hide its mercenary credential as fighting particularly for no justifiable humane reason but for the sake of cash and the huge resources that can be earned intervening on behalf of itself and the Russian state in these rich reserves of abundant raw material. Capitalism dominates in Russia, but Russian imperialism at this stage is economically much weaker compared to Western imperialism, but militarily more adventurous. And the Wagner group serves as its auxiliary force playing an important and brutal role in Ukraine and Syria, has since 2017, enabled the Russian capital to get control of gold and diamond mines and other resources from the Central African Republic to Sudan. It is taking full advantage of one of the legacies of the Russian Revolution in opposing colonisation, which even the Stalinist regime in the former Soviet Union played upon then to support the decolonisation in Africa as a means of gaining spheres of influence for itself in the Cold War era. The same conclusion quickly be drawn in relation to China, which is now the second most powerful imperialist power globally, competing with the US for the number one spot. It is the largest bilateral creditor to Africa, using these loan facilities to establish an iron grip on mineral and land resources and to dominate local markets with its manufactured exports.
We are therefore witnessing the domestic reign of policies moving over into the foreign sphere with the Tinubu regime desperate to prove himself a true faithful of international capital; what better means than championing the invasion of Niger to win himself into the heart of Western Imperialism and the same time turn out a good lackey of French imperialism.
This is one of the vital reasons why the working masses in Nigeria must be at the front run to oppose war and invasion of the Niger Republic, and as well canvass the same for other countries in the Sahel region and Africa at large. Indeed a war will impact the working masses in the Sahel region negatively, leaving the living condition worst off. For a region already bugged down by unending war with Islamic insurgency. The regular army with be further undermined and weakened and laying it open for some of these Islamic groups to even directly control the state as was done by the Taliban group in Afghanistan.
At the other end of the border in Nigeria, the seven states of Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina Zamafara, Jigawa, Yobe, and Bornu will also be negatively impacted by sanctions and not any less also by war, as well as the other countries of Libya, Algeria, Chad, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali. Sanctions will deeply affect the exchange of goods and services from all ends and worsen the food crisis and hunger in an area reviling from desert encroachment and Islamic insurgency.
Workers coming forward to oppose war and sanction should not be interpreted to mean support for the new military adventurers who, with only the question of time, will clearly demonstrate that they are not any different from those they have taken over from both in terms of policy direction and calling and craving for the endorsement of the Western imperialism for their takeover of power or as we are already seeing a cry for Russia and China to take the place of French and Western imperialism as the case may be. Or even support for a return of those overthrown or even for regimes that will still come.
7fc3f7cf58