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In continuation of
the series of events marking Nigeria’s 50th anniversary, the left and
progressive persons converged at the Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic
Research and Training in Kano to reflect on their contributions to the
construction of democracy in the country.

Numerous comrades
including Baba Omojola, Issa Aremu, Bamidele Aturu, Ibrahim Muazzam, W.
O. Alli, Dipo Fashina, Baba Aye, Hauwa Mustapha, Nasiru Kura, Raufu
Mustapha, Abiodun Aremu and Y. Z. Yau graced the occasion. Our foreign
friends such as Bjorn Beckman (Sweden), Yusuf Bangura (Sierra Leone),
Lloyd Sachikonye (Zimbabwe) and Sakhela Buhlungo (South Africa) also
participated in the event.

It was an occasion
for the celebration of ideas, of recognising that over the past fifty
years, the ideas of progress, social change, development and
transforming the lives of the masses for the better have always been
championed by the small but articulate left circle in Nigeria. Indeed,
it was with the relative decline of leftist ideology over the past two
decades that Nigeria descended into the current regime that is governed
by sheer and absolute greed, self-interest and self-aggrandisement.

Leftist forces in
Nigeria were influenced by the great revolutionary ideas of Marx,
Engels and Lenin. In Nigeria, our teachers have included Michael
Imoudu, Ola Oni, Esker Toyo, Dapo Fatogun, Hassan Sumonu and Baba
Omojola. The inspiration of the Left also came with the promise of the
defunct Soviet Union that the mobilisation unleashed by socialism can
generate the electricity and steel that would industrialise the economy
in a couple of decades. And then, the Berlin Wall collapsed and the
Soviet Union disintegrated provoking disillusion for some and
disorientation for others.

The core of the
progressive Left however never gave up the struggle. Having been
schooled in the Leninist theory of organisation aimed at precipitating
the “national democratic revolution,” this energy was transferred to
the struggle against military rule and for the expansion of human
rights.

The Left is
eminently qualified for this having been schooled in the radical
tradition of the progressive student’s movement and the Academic Staff
Union of Universities and has cut its teeth in journalism, trade
unionism and civil society activism in human rights organisations. In
spite of, or rather, because of its ideological training the Left
became a powerful agitator of the liberal state based on the rule of
law, even if in our own thinking, we were keenly engaged in the
struggle for socialism and uplifting the masses from poverty and
squalor.

The Nigerian Left,
I am convinced, has been the champion of the promotion of liberal
democratic rights. A key ally has been the legal and judicial system.
It has been a powerful ally because Nigeria has an old tradition of
producing crop of lawyers engaged in private practice for whom the
emergence and improvement of the rule of law and a regime of rights is
a professional and political necessity.

Of course the
alliance between the progressives, the lawyers and the judicial system
has been based on the fact that the principles and practice of the rule
of law have been constantly violated and threatened by successive
military and civilian regimes. In this context, one of the most
frightening moments for the alliance was the enactment by the Buhari
regime of Decree no. 2 of 1984 that allowed the Chief of General Staff
to detain citizens for extended periods without charging them to court.
The decree suspended the important instrument of ‘habeas corpus’ that
citizens could use to compel the state to produce detainees in court.

It should be
remembered that in April 1961, the three ‘National Government’ leaders;
Ahmadu Bello, Michael Okpara and Tafawa Balewa met and decided to enact
this type of detention law but resistance to their plans was too strong
(African Concord 16.8.1988, p. 16). It took the Nigerian state 23 years
of ‘effort’ to impose this repugnant law. The Civil Liberties
Organisation (CLO), and the Nigerian Organisation of Democratic Lawyers
needed to organise to confront the risk.

What emerged from
the conference was that democracy is a progressive feature of political
society because it is based on the premise that all human beings are
free and equal. It is a progressive principle for the organisation of
society even if it is true that democratic principles are not fully
implemented in the societies that lay claim to it. A gap therefore,
exists between enunciated democratic principles and ‘really existing
democracies’.

Of course, the
problem with liberal democracy is that it neglects the need for
economic equality and social justice. This is why the Left believes
strongly that liberal democracy is not enough. The conclusion of the
conference was that the Left must never give up on the task of building
the capacity and will to engender social movements that can bring
economic equality and social justice back into the democratic agenda of
empowering the people.