By Jaye Gaskia
“Every
generation must out of relative obscurity, discover its mission; fulfill it, or
betray it”…….Frantz Fanon
“There
is one Army stronger than all Armies in the world; that is an Idea whose time
has come”……Victor Hugo
How do
we begin? Where do we start from? Rupture! There idea, and materiality, that
is, tangible reality of Rupture; by which we mean the historically intense
process of radical break [with certain essentially detrimental parts], as well
as radical continuity [with certain other equally essential enhancing parts]
with our historical march as a people and nation.
Since I
do not intend to be dense, let me explain. Rupture in the context in which it
is being used here, describes the very essence and core character of a
revolutionary moment, occurrence and process. It is used in the sense by which
a revolution entails a very radical break in and with certain processes that
have come to previously define the life of a nation and people. So the old
society, or more appropriately the old way of running the society is overthrown
and supplanted by new ways of organizing society.
But it
also connotes and includes the process, equally intense of continuity with
certain traditions, in particular traditions of resistance, from the old
society, and the old ways of organizing society.
In our
specific national, that is Nigeria context, Rupture will connote on the one hand,
the very intense and urgent process of radical and apparently sudden break with
the unwholesome traditions of leadership and governance by our failed thieving,
treasury looting ruling class [all its factions inclusive]. These areas of
national life with which we shall need to break with radically include the
culture of sleaze, fraud, and corruption; the culture of inept and incompetent
governance; the culture of the perpetration and perpetuation of improvisation of the people and underdevelopment of the nation [in particular
underdevelopment and underutilization of its human and material resources]; and
the culture of exclusion, marginalization and exploitation of the immense
majority of citizens, the subordinate classes of our society.
Rupture
will also connote on the other hand, the process of radical, intensified, and
modified continuity with the humanizing traditions and culture of struggle and
resistance against injustice and oppression; and for social justice and equity;
for an inclusive experience of citizenship; for the building of an inclusive,
and socially just and equitable nation; for the radical redistribution of
national wealth etc.
Rupture
2015, is thus the political and revolutionary project to build up the momentum
as we approach the 2015 general elections, that will enable us to set the stage
for achieving this dialectical, that is inter connected and mutually
reinforcing processes of radical break and continuity.
Rupture
2015 is a project to ginger, awaken, and actively mobilise ourselves to ensure
that we build up sufficient social momentum to influence decisively the
processes leading to, and culminating in the 2015 general elections, in a
manner that allows us through the 2015 general elections to challenge, shake,
demystify, and eventually bring down and supplant the summit of unaccountable,
opaque, lootocratic, and increasingly unrepresentative power of the nation’s
corrupt treasury looting and dependent ruling class.
It is
in this sense that elections [that is very intensely class contested elections]
and the electoral process can assume the character of an incipient and emergent
revolutionary process; ‘election as revolution’.
Is
there a potential for this kind of phenomenon to happen in our country? Yes
there is. The crisis engendered by the annulment of the June 12 presidential
elections of 1993, and the struggle for the qualified restoration of that
mandate was one such historical instance.
A more
recent, and far more historically significant and potentially decisive such
process was the January Uprising of 2012, the Ten Days that shook Nigeria, and
the entrenched establishment to its very foundations.
The
good thing is that the radicalising experience of the January Uprising is still
fresh, and the generation radicalised by it is still an emergent political
force.
But if
we are to achieve the political and socio-economic objective of Rupture 2015;
then we will have to undertake the following processes:
·First, we shall need to continue to deepen, and enhance our daily
resistance against the injustices in our society, and the trends towards as
well as the deleterious consequences of the governance ineptitude,
administrative incompetence, and greed driven light fingeredness of our
treasury looting ruling class. Every act of theirs that threaten our existence,
and tends to further impoverish us and make us insecure, we must continue to
resist and mobilize against.
·Second, we must build explicitly political platforms [#DPSR]that
we must utilize in converting our anguish into anger; and our anger into
political action; which politically challenges the claim to power of the ruling
elites. This political platforms and formations must be independent of the
political parties and formations of the ruling elites; as well as being
autonomous of the crippling domination of individual political heavyweights
[alias ‘Godfathers and Godmothers’] of the ruling elites.
·Third, it is incumbent on us to ensure that we consciously mobilize
as many Nigerians as are qualified to vote to register to vote, that is to be
on the electoral roll/voters register. We must particularly target the millions
of Nigerians who have never bothered with the electoral process in the past,
inclusive of the many millions who have just come of age. We must target the
demographics of youth and women; majority of those radicalized by the January
Uprising. In this sense an integral part of this quest must be to reach every
Occupy Nigeria activist, and seek to convince them to become activists and
organisers for the Great Historic Political Challenge of Rupture 2015.
·Fourth, it is one thing to get registered as a voter, it is quite
another, to come out to vote. It will therefore be equally important and
incumbent on us to get as many registered voters to come out to actually vote
as possible.
·Fifth, we must reach out to Nigerians, organise and mobilise them
with a new vision of inclusive and shared national prosperity; inclusive
citizenship; and uplifting national greatness. We shall then need to support
and accompany this vision, with an alternative and radical program for social
emancipation of our people, and the national liberation of our country. Such a
program will be built essentially around a massive project of ensuring equity
and access to basic social infrastructures and services. A project that will
require massive investment in social capital, in the provision and rebuilding
of infrastructure, and services; focused on overcoming the ingrained deficits
in energy supply and access, affordable and accessible housing, affordable and
accessible roads and transportation, affordable and accessible functional
education and quality healthcare, achieving food security and food sovereignty,
industrial revival and rejuvenation of economic processes and activities, the
diversification of the fundamental basis of the economy, and the prudent,
transparent and accountable utilization of the nation’s resources, necessarily
including the vigorous and exemplary tackling, through severe punishment of corruption
[past and present], waste and leakage.
For example there is no reason why with a cumulative solid
minerals development fund of over N800bn we have not been able to achieve a
viable and commercially profitable solid minerals sector of the economy. Nor is
there any reason why with a cumulative N400bn ecological fund, we have not been
able to put processes in place to tackle and reverse ecological and
environmental devastation.
There is equally no reason why any government which has available
to it in one year alone, and external reserve of $48bn should not be able to
undertake, with just this amount, and without spending new savings; a massive
transformation of the national economy through massive investment in basic
infrastructure and services [including safety nets and social protection/security];
while simultaneously creating millions of sustainable jobs, and therefore
tackling the joblessness, hopelessness, poverty, and alienation that fuels
insecurity and crime.
If we want to make the 2015 general elections qualitatively
different; if we want that election to make a qualitative difference in our
personal and collective lives; then we must be prepared ourselves to make a
difference on the road towards 2015; we must be prepared and ready to become
political activists and politically active in the search for, and building of
the alternative platform, party, program, and social emancipatory and national
libratory vision to TAKE BACK NIGERIA.
We are in the era of global crisis and global resistance, we must
take advantage of the globally altering balance of social [class] forces; we
must take urgent, immediate and active steps to Seize The time, Seize The
Moment, and Take a Giant Leap Forward.
The greatest obstacles to our realization of our self
emancipation; to our realization of the goal and objective of Rupture 2015
however will not only be the frantic and deadly opposition and backlash from
the ruinous thieving elites we seek to unseat and dethrone; it will also be our
ingrained lack of self confidence, and the large dose of self doubt. They say
to us that we lack the capacity to build the necessary organization and
momentum to achieve such historic tasks and duties. And we believe them and
internalize these resulting in self doubt. So we go ahead and say to ourselves
that we actually lack the capacity.
Well guess what? We made the January Uprising! How can we lack the
capacity to set ourselves free and by so doing liberate our nation? How can we
doubt our own abilities so much that we are prepared to rely on elements of the
ruling class, and their organizations, as the vehicles for our liberation; the
same elements that have occupied the political space, and used their occupation
to mine our national treasury to the point of exhaustion over the last three
decades? How can those who have played decisive roles in our national decline
be expected to be the ones to lead us out of this hell?
We can make the 2015 general elections a decisive one for our
nation, and the trajectory of our national history. We can build up the
momentum of popular mobilization such that we change and transform the dynamics
of that election in our favour. We can build a mass and popular political
movement, which can transform the electoral process into a revolutionary
contestation; and an electoral victory into the inauguration of a popular
democratic revolution. We can get people out to register to vote, and get them
out to vote; we can provide them with a real alternative; and we can then truly
make our votes count.
This is a viable path to popular victory, a possible road to popular
democratic power, it is a road whose abandonment maybe to our own peril.
Rupture 2015? Yes we can rupture the vice grip of this inept and
corrupt thieving ruling elites on power, and consequently on our socio-economic
life as a nation and people.
(Visit:
takebacknigeria.blogspot.com; Follow @jayegaskia & @protesttopower;
Interact on FB: Take Back Nigeria & Jaye Gaskia; #DPSR)
