Razaq Bamidele
Comrade Abiodun Aremu is the Secretary of the Joint Action Front (JAF). In an interview with our correspondent, in Lagos, on Monday, the vocal pro-humanity crusader emphasised his organisation’s support for the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), declaration to oppose the government proposed fuel price hike.
Recall that the NLC in a 9-page New Year 2022 message has hinted that a nationwide strike will commence on January 27, 2022. The statement was signed by the Congress President, Comrade Ayuba Waba. It is in response to that, that Aremu said his organisation has described the coming strike a welcome idea.
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Is your organisation, the Joint Action Front (JAF), excited by the pronouncement of the NLC leadership to shut the country down over the proposed fuel price hike by the Federal Government?
Yes of course. We in JAF will be the happiest if the NLC and other partners in the organised Labour are indeed resolved and willing to commit their all not only to resist the planned hike in the prices of petroleum products but a total fight against the neo-liberal policies of privatisation and deregulation, that have been responsible for untold hardship and suffering of the working people and poor masses of Nigeria for decades.
As JAF, the record is there, we have never failed to stand in struggle with the Nigeria workers and the poor masses. As a movement committed to System Change for the socialist transformation of society, we have always been the first on the barricade lines and the last to retreat in the face of state violence and unprovoked act of genocide unleashed by the Federal Government against defenceless Nigerians!
In 2012, on January 3rd, we heralded what has become historically known as the January 2012 uprising and with organised Labour continued on the mass protests from January 9 and didn’t leave the barricade until the afternoon of January 16, 2012 when the military forcefully halted the mass procession from the NLC Yaba Secretariat at Palmgroove on Ikorodu road on the way to the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park at Ojota, Lagos!
We had same experience on May 18, 2016 and September 27, 2020. We are always the last to leave the barricade in consistence to our slogan: ‘dare to struggle, dare to win!’
Don’t you think there might be something positive in the new proposed hike…?
(Cuts in) There is nothing new to contend with on the hike in the prices of petroleum products. All successive regimes from Obasanjo, Jonathan and Buhari have pursued the same deceptive and anti-people and anti-poor policies of hike in fuel prices.
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The only exception was the Yar’Adua regime who in the face of reason, acceded to the popular demand by the Nigerian workers and poor Nigerians, reversed the hike in prices by the preceding regime of OBJ from N75 a litre, first to N70 a litre and shortly thereafter to N65.
That regime is on record to have also reversed the hike in VAT from 10% to 5% and including reversal of the sales of the refineries and other public assets!
Therefore, our commitment to join the latest struggle is also depended on our principles to struggle in defence of collective interests.
Ordinarily, left to JAF, this shouldn’t be another deception of a Federal Government raising a hike in fuel prices and ambushing organised Labour in a deceptive game of price reduction!
Are you convinced that organised Labour will fight this battle?
It isn’t about my conviction; it is about what the leadership of Labour said they will do! What’s my business doubting them? I don’t doubt others who commit themselves to do something, rather I would encourage them because it is in the interest of the working people and oppressed masses that they own up to their words.
But if you ask me about JAF, I can, as a member of the leadership in JAF say, we will fight as JAF with whatever is our limited strength.
I come from a tradition that shares the golden words of Ernesto Che Guevara on resistance to exploitation, oppression and injustice.
Che said and I quote: “A battle may either be won or lost, the most important is to fight the battle!” This current anti-workers and anti-poor regime of infamy, with crude and self-opinionated posture has endured because of lacking consistent organised resistance against its imperialist policies of NEO-LIBERALISM.
We do hope that organised Labour would appreciate that the context of the impending struggle is ideological and political and there can be no further hiding of faces!
