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 Daily Independent Online.
* Friday, July 23, 2004.
How Imoudu-led strike sacked British imperial rule
By Enoghase
Sylvester
Research & Data Desk
Trade unions, now
Nigeria Labour Congress, have played a pivotal and often turbulent role
in Nigeria's political and economic life for almost a century.
The first organised labour
movement was formed in 1912 when civil servants formed a union, followed
shortly afterwards by railway workers and teachers.
The formal legalisation of
unions by the British colonial government in 1938 was followed by rapid
consolidation of the labour movement. Chief Michael Atokhaimin Ominus
Imoudu as a trade unionist succeeded in organising and registering the
Nigerian Railway Workers Union in 1942, as the first registered labour
union in Nigeria.
The strike by students of
Kings College had taken place in March 1944 and it was quelled with
repressive measures. Some of the ringleaders, 75 of them, were expelled.
Eight of them were conscripted into the colonial army to fight in the
Second World War which started on September 3, 1939 and came to an end on
June 8, 1945.
The Nigerian educated elite in
Lagos and the provinces were infuriated by the measures and came together
to form a central organization, which would co-ordinate the activities of
all political associations. A meeting was thus convened on June 10, 1944,
presided over by Herbert Macauley.
By January 1945, the National
Union comprising 87 member unions, among which were 60 ethnic unions and
three Camerounian groups, was founded and christened the National Council
of Nigeria and the Cameroon (NCNC) to campaign for independence.
The heroic
date of June 2, 1945, marked the day Comrade Michael Athkhomien Ominibus
Imoudu was released from three-year jail by the British colonial regime.
Imoudu was then the president of the Nigerian labour movement, which was
in the vanguard of the anti-colonial uprising which also wanted the best
for the Nigerian worker.
On June 21, 1945, Comrade
Imoudu led the longest workers' strike in Nigeria that paralysed social
and economic life for 44 days. It involved more than 30,000 workers
throughout the country. Imoudu emerged from the strike with the assurance
from the government that there would be no victimisation and that an
impartial commission would examine the workers’ demand.
Comrade Imoudu organised the
famous demonstration of railway and others’ workers and led them to the
Government House, Marina, during the governorship of Sir Arthur Richard,
to demand for improved conditions of service. Although he succeeded, the
demonstration earned him detention.
With the Imoudu-led strike, the British knew the death
knell of their imperial rule had sounded. They hurriedly arranged a
transition programme starting with the Richards Constitution of 1946, the
regional governments in 1954 and final granting of independence in 1960.
Also, the demonstration by the
coal miners in Enugu in November 1949 fueled the unexpected exit of the
British imperial rule in Nigeria. The coal miners were demonstrating
their deteriorating conditions of service when the police shot to death
21 of them and many more were wounded. Quickly, the nationalist summoned
a meeting in Lagos to address the issue. The meeting demanded a full
official inquiry into the shooting and even suggested punishment to be
meted out to the offending police officers.
A National Emergency
Commission was subsequently formed to give bite to the agitation. It had
Dr.Akinola Maja as chairman and Mazi Mbonu Ojike as secretary while Dr.
J. Akanni Doherty was treasurer.
There was mass protest and
agitation calling for Commission of Inquiring to probe the shooting,
which resulted to the setting up of the Fitzgerald Commission of Enquiry
on the incident. Some of the members of the Commission included Bode
Thomas, H.O Davies, S.O.Gbadamosi, Michael Imoudu and Rotimi Williams.
When the report was released
in June 10, 1950, the commission stressed the political implication of
the shooting and called for a better distribution of the national
resources; the bridging of the wide gap between the living conditions of
Nigerian workers and the European workers; and blamed the police for
high-handedness.
In all the struggles that
culminated in the independence, artists, journalists, proletarians,
intellectuals, workers and cultural associations were involved.
Hubert Ogunde, the doyen of
modern Nigerian theatre, made his debut in 1945 with the "Bread and
Bullet" play in tribute to the revolutionary effort of the workers
and allies in all the cultural fronts.
Ogunde founded the first
professional theatre group in Nigeria, the Ogunde Concert Party, and
wrote ‘Strike and Hunger’,
against the backdrop of the general strike of workers against the
exploitative wages paid by the colonial administration in Nigeria. The
theme song, ‘Kobo Ojumo’ (A Penny a Day), known as 'the song of the
people," became a big hit at the time.
M.C.K. Ajaluchukwu was the playwright and chief
propagandist of the Zikist Movement from 1946 to 51, a season of radical
political mobilisation that Mokwugo Okoye described as the "roaring
forties." One of the most articulate and ornate voices of the period
was Chief Anthony Enahoro who became an editor of a newspaper at 21. This
means that to date Chief Enahoro has spent about 58 years of his life searching for good,
democratic governance which is still far away in the desert as far as
democracy is concerned in Nigeria. Most people in his generation have
either given up or died on account of search for good governance in
Nigeria.
Recent moves by President
Olusegun Obasanjo to permanently clip the wings of Nigerian Labour
Congress through the introduction of the infamous Trade Bills on June 8,
2004 to the National Assembly has however proved that the President is
only trying to justify the claim that the Nigeria Labour Congress came
into existence through his regime in 1978.
To effectively pursue his game
plan, the President is trying to use the same law, then a Decree, that
brought the Nigerian Labour Congress into existence against it.
As soon as Nigeria got her
independence in 1960, the mantle of leadership was given to Nigerians.
The gap between the rich and the poor steadily accelerated, as did high
level of corruption among the country’s military class.
In 1969, during the
Nigerian/Biafran civil war, the government outlawed strike through a
decree.
In 1975, Brigadier-General
Murtala Ramat Muhammed took power in a bloodless coup, promising a return
to civilian rule in October 1,1979 and launched aggressive reforms.
He was assassinated on
February 13, 1976, and his deputy, Brigadier- General Olusegun Obasanjo
succeeded his administration with the promise to carry-on where the late
Murtala Muhammed stopped.
Brigadier-General Olusegun
Obasanjo, current President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of
the Federal Republic of Nigeria, oversaw the drafting of a new
constitution aimed at installing civilian rule in 1979.
In a decree amendment in 1978, Gen. Obasanjo’s regime reorganised more than 1,000
unions into 70 registered industrial bodies under the umbrella of the
Nigerian Labour Congress.
General Obasanjo handed over
power in 1979 to a civilian government led by President Shehu Shagari.
The Nigerian Labour Congress
has for almost three decades enjoyed the monopoly of being the only
central labour organ in the country and the last hope of the common man.
If the game plan of President Olusegun Obasanjo sails through, then the
hope of the common man in Nigeria which the Labour Congress has for the
past decades tried relentlessly to support will be hanged on a guava tree
in Abuja.
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