Comrade Osatohamhen Samuel Ebhohon, Publicity Secretary of the African Action Congress (AAC) in Lagos State, is a core activist and public affairs analyst. In this interview with EJIKEME OMENAZU, he speaks on the inability of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to discipline former Governor Nyesom Wike, and the leadership crisis in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) among other crucial issues. Excerpt:

The local government elections will hold in Lagos soon. Is your party going to be part of it? If so, what is it doing to ensure that your members win some seats both at councillorship and chairmanship levels?

The African Action Congress (AAC) will be participating in the Lagos State local government elections. This will be the first local government election we will participate in since the formation of the party in 2018. This is because from May 2019 to 2022, we were at the Appeal Court fighting to get our party back from the hands of the state-sponsored saboteur, Leonard Nzewu. In regards to what we are doing to ensure we win, I will say we are doing what pro-people’s political parties do to ensure that they win elections. We are organising with the people. We are sharing our ideology with them and educating them on the reasons the ruling parties have left them poor. We believe in the people’s dictatorship and power. That is what we want to give to the people. By next year, we expect the people to vote for the only party that will allow them to be dictators of the policies that affect their everyday life.

What strategies is your party putting in place to ensure that it is not robbed of victory during the local government polls in Lagos?

The ruling class knows us too well to try to be funny. We are not a party that goes to court to fight for our mandate. We occupy the streets and shutdown activities. If the All Progressives Congress (APC) pulls their funny shenanigans on us, we will show them what the people’s power truly is.

Lagos is the powerhouse of African Action Congress (AAC). To what extent is the Lagos State chapter helping to ensure that the party gains a lot of ground in the nation’s polity to be able to challenge the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)?

The African Action Congress (AAC) does not have a state she regards as a power house because it is not your conventional political party. The AAC’s power house is the working class people. Wherever the working class people are rising against oppression, that is where our power house is. The AAC is as strong as the political and class consciousness of the people and that is why we spent most of our time and resources organising with the oppressed people of Nigeria and educating them.

What is your take on the crisis in the ruling party over the position of its National Chairmanship and the corruption allegations against him?

My take as always is: I wish them self-destruction. Let the power they are drunk on be their damnation.

How do you see the inability of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to discipline former Gov Nyesom Wike for his alleged anti-party activities that contributed to the emergency of President Bola Tinubu and accepting to work in the All Progressives Congress (APC) government as a minister?

It is simple: the APC and the PDP are not different from each other. They are one and the same. PDP factional members that called themselves the New PDP were part of the people who formed the APC in 2013. That could happen because they had and still have the same neo-liberal political economy ideology. Wike is just a glaring example of the contradiction of their ideology. It has always been my view that Nigeria operates a one party system disguised as a multi-party system. Wike’s anti-party activities are one of the many pieces of evidence to support that statement, and that is why PDP could not stop or discipline him.

Considering the state of the economy, would you say that Labour’s demand of N650,000 as minimum wage is realistic?

If it is realistic for the members of the National Assembly to take home jumbo salaries for doing nothing other than padding national budgets, sharing N400 million plus to purchase bulletproof vehicles, sending prayers into their inbox and joining hands with the presidency to loot our treasury dry, then it is more than realistic for workers to demand N650,000 minimum wage. I must also say that Nigeria and its 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are capable of paying workers more.

With the gains recently recorded by the Naira, do you think the nation’s economy is recovering so fast as predicted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?

The Naira went from an official rate of N475/$ to over 1500/$ and fell back to 1030/$ or so, and somehow we are celebrating that? Honestly, this is the reason these politicians get away with a lot of crimes against the people. There is an urgent need for the working class to stop celebrating mediocres of the elite ruling class. They were the ones who turned the naira into a worthless paper in the first place when they put their interests and that of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) before the interest of the people. As we speak, the naira is currently at 1250/$. During the period when the naira was gaining against the dollar, did the life of the working class become a bit easy? The answer is no. But, did the life of the elite class and their banks become bigger? The answer is yes. The elite and political class are the only ones who have access to dollars for round tripping. Tinubu and his band of neo-liberal economists and financial advisors have succeeded in turning our nation’s currency into a speculative currency where merchants buy the deep and hold as it rises. I hope the working class people can see the effect of the floating currency and leave it for the market to speculate. I would also like to state that the only reason the naira made some gains against the dollar is because Tinubu and his band of neo-liberal economists and financial advisors made a U-turn to defend the naira. The very idea that they said was not affordable. I guess they realised it was cheaper than naira selling at N2000+ to a dollar.

How do you think the Military and other security agencies could control the upsurge in terrorist activities in parts of the country?

As I said earlier, the Police Force was not established to serve the working people. Rather, it was set up to protect the ruling class from the consequence of their inaction and from democratic people’s uprising. Kidnapping and terrorism are part of the consequence of their inaction. Nobody wakes up and decides, ‘I want to be a terrorist or a kidnapper’. The government’s complete neglect of its citizens throws people toward such a detrimental path. Until unemployment, poverty, and marginalisation are addressed and eliminated, we will continue to be plagued with terrorism and kidnapping. However, I have been seeing all over the news how the military and the police have been meticulously capturing and eliminating these people for some time now, especially in states close to Abuja. I will bet you it is only so because Abuja is the capital of the ruling elite of Nigeria and they more than anything value the lives of those that belong to their class. So, the security agencies do not need me to tell them how to resolve our security issues. They are very much aware of how to resolve them, but it is not in their interest or that of capitalism to do so.

Prominent Nigerians have been harping on the need to restructure the federation. Do you think this could be achieved during this President Bola Tinubu administration?

It Is the body language of the country right now that necessitates the need for Nigeria to be restructured soon. The working class in Nigeria has given up on the false promise of economic and political prosperity that the bourgeois class gave when they first replaced the colonial rulers. Their failure to put the conditions of the working class Nigerians (that were already in a state of emergency due to colonial exploitation and dehumanisation), over their ethno-nationalistic ambition and primitive capital accumulation, is the reason we are here today. This is why I said that if the conversation of restructuring Nigeria does not address the devolution of power to the working class in the form of popular democracy and vertical accountability by pro¬viding more direct avenues for citizens to influence and participate in policy-making/political decisions, I will advise Nigerians to dismiss such discourse. The battle of the working class or ordinary Nigeria is not a tribal or religious battle. It is rather a class war. It is the ruling class, which includes the politicians and the multi-millionaires and billionaires of Nigeria vs the working class, which consists of the professionals working for the ruling class and the poor petty traders, farmers, cleaners and the like. This is why I cannot stop saying the working class must organise as a class for itself. (Sunday Independent)

Update news