GLORY KILANKO was formerly chair of the Nigerian Labour Congress women's section, National Coordinating Secretary of the socialistfeminist group, "Women in Nigeria", founder of the Campaign for Democracy and is a leading militant in the newly formed organisation, Democratic Alternative. BALA KUMAR spoke with her on 7 July, three days after the oil workers' strike began but before the NLC called a general strike only to call it off two days later.
O MARK the first anniverthe 12 June 1993 elections there have been renewed protests against the military.
Meanwhile a constitutional conference has been organised by the Abacha regime to redraft the constitution, after which a handover to civilian rule is promised. How do you assess this conference?
Abacha has come to office to fulfil his life's desire not because he has any policies to offer to the country. There was an arrangement whereby the previous military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, would rule for four years and then hand power to Abacha for a further four years. At this point we fought hard to say that Nigeria is not a relay race for the military to hand the baton of power to one another.
Nothing fruitful will come out of this latest conference. Babangida spent 40 million naira on the last conference, which rewrote the 1979 constitution. We have neither implemented the new constitution nor experimented with it. Now the handpicked delegates to the conference are idling in the federal capital, Abuja, because apparently there is no accommodation for them. The people there are the likes of Umaru Dikko who looted the entire treasury when he was a minister, before running away to London. This same man is today given a red carpet welcome by Abacha to give legitimacy to the conference!
As a woman active in grass-roots struggles, I am disappointed that Abacha's wife has produced a programme called "Family Support". She is not prepared to support the "Better Life" programme that Miriam Babangida, wife of the previous ruler, spent millions of naira on. The first phase of this new programme is to last four years, surely a clue as to her husband's plans! This new programme is designed to push women back into the kitchen, so that their unemployed menfolk can take their jobs.
We are determined to fight Abacha in the same vein we fought Babangida and we will not relent in our efforts. There have been continuous protests since the President-elect, Moshood Abiola was arrested on 23 June and they have been spreading around the country and growing in momentum.
What kinds of protests have there been recently?
Initially there were mass demonstrations and people were man-handled and shot down. Abacha sent in tanks and heavily armed men on to every street in Lagos. The situation was so tense that people were afraid to leave their homes. There are over a hundred and fifty in detention centres solely for demanding the restoration of the people's verdict of 12 June 1993. Market women participated in the protests by locking their stalls for four days. They demonstrated and chanted songs in front of the American Embassy and the British High Commission, demanding an end to military rule. Imagine the sacrifice these women made. They survive on their daily earnings but they were prepared to suffer today for a better future for their children.
The National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers
(Nupeng) which has 150,000 members has been on strike since 4 July supporting pro- democracy demands. Yet the sole trade union centre, the
Nigerian Labour Congress
(NLC), has not supported the strike and is taking a conciliatory position towards the dictatorship. Why is this?
The shameful fact is that the leadership of the NLC are participants in the Constitutional Conference. They see it as an opportunity to make some fast money and have been doing all they can to frustrate the efforts of the democratic forces. I used to be Chair of the women's section but I was removed from that position because of the role I played in the democratic movement. They were in support of Babangida remaining in office. While I was underground evading arrest by State agents, the leadership stage-managed an election for my position. Never mind, at
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least I don't have to mortgage my conscience. The NLC leadership operates like this: they pretend to go on strike in order to negotiate with the military authorities; then they tell the workers that the dispute has been resolved but never inform them of the details of the settlement. Some of us are working seriously with the rank and file so that decisions at the level of the NLC are made by each worker in each union affiliate and not by the President or General Secretary of the union on behalf of the workers. We are fighting to democratise the NLC as well as wider society.
There are two main forces leading the democratic movement. The Campaign for Democracy (CD) which groups together about forty human rights, civil liberties and progressive organisations and the new
National Democratic Coalition
(Nadeco) which is made up of ex-generals, discredited civilian politicians and business people who seem to have belatedly developed a democratic conscience.
All avenues for the individuals in Nadeco to make money have been blocked; that is why they want Abacha out. These people at one time or another ruled Nigeria but never did anything useful for the country and now they claim to know what democracy is. It is not true. It is not our intention to push out Abacha so that someone else of his ilk comes into office. We have gone beyond that stage.
Our differences with the leadership of the CD stem from the secret talks that its Chair, Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti, had with Abacha's second in command, LieutenantGeneral Oladipo Diya, prior to Abacha's coup last year. Diya promised RansomeKuti that should Abacha come to power, he would install Moshood Abiola as President. We had one binding principle within CD, which was that we were against military rule and intervention of any guise and at any time. Today Ransome-Kuti is fighting against the military because they have reneged on their promise to him. He was stupid to believe them in the first place. He calmed some of the protests and bred illusions in Abacha's regime. He told people that Abacha had come to "clear up the mess".
There remains the possibility of another military coup, this time against Abacha and led by either Oladipo Diya, Babangida loyalists or lower ranking soldiers, all claiming to stand for the 12 June result. How do you view this?
We are worried about this situation. There are soldiers with a number of grievances against their leadership, like the regulars who have served all their lives but who are not in positions of power because they have been by-passed by the graduates of the elite Nigerian Defence Academy. All these groups seek power to loot the country's wealth.
Our position is this: if the military strikes ten times, we will fight them each time. Out of thirty-four years of political independence, the military have ruled for twenty-six and look at the mess which Nigeria is in! We are not against Abacha as an individual but against the role of the military in politics.
Why did you and others leave the CD and found the Democratic Alternative? What are your immediate demands?
Anti-imperia Ken Saro-Wiwa, well known Nigeri val of the Ogoni People (Mosop) w is kept in leg irons and hand-cuffs al This is not the first time that Saro-Wi authorities in punishment for his rol Ogoni community in the Niger Delta. Ogoniland is the site for the oil-mining safety conditions have despoiled the le live in the polluted waters, livestock die is heavy with the stench of petroleum fu In an interview last year, Saro-Wiwa sai do in Nigeria, and in Ogoni, what they d worries about elephants. They stop the e then they cannot worry about human bein
In desperation
We are calling for an Interim National Government comprising the Social Democratic Party presidential candidate, Abiola, and others, for eighteen months. This government would lead towards genuine multi-party elections and the enduring democracy which people yearn for. We strongly support the principles behind 12 June and not characters like Abiola. That election brought Nigerians together as one for the first time, cutting across regional, ethnic and religious lines.
We left CD because we felt betrayed by Ransome-Kuti. We are not agitating for the sake of it. We aspire to capture power ourselves, the masses of Nigeria. Unlike CD, those of us in the Democratic Alternative are building a political movement. We are not a part of this movement just for Nigeria's sake, we are trying to visualise what Africa should look like. We are fed up of military rulers and discredited politicians mis-ruling our continent. We are fed up of imperialism dictating to us what our lives and futures should be. We need a strong Pan-Africanist movement, a mass movement which unites Africans in the diaspora and those on the continent. Our common enemies are the African leaders, military or civilian, and we have to overthrow them. * ist fighter back in gaol an author and leader of the Movement for the Survias arrested and detained by the military in May and an army camp in Port Harcourt. wa has been arrested and il-treated by the military e as a spokesman for the 500 thousand strong operations of Shell. Frequent oil spills and poor ind and poisoned its inhabitants. Fish no longer nothing of value grows on the land and the air nes 1: "I've accused them of racism because Shell not do in other parts of the world m port of in pe human beings dying.
Mosop was formed to campaign for autonomy and control over the Ogoni's land and the resources under it.
The Nigerian military regularly launches murderous raids against the Ogoni, massacring entire communities and imprisoning hundreds of its youth, as they try to suppress riots and uprisings against the oil companies and the goverment.
There are wide-spread concerns for the health of Ken Saro-Wiwa who is a heart patient and suffered a heart attack while in prison last year. According to an independent investigator, he has been repeatedly beaten, starved and denied access to family and lawyers. An international campaign has been launched by environmental groups to secure his release and /V readers are urged to join these efforts. O
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FAR RIGHT IN EUrOPE