Nigeria: Down with the fraudulent proposed budget for 2020!

It is the sharing formula of the national wealth amongst theiving barons of APC/PDP!

 

Acquit OAU3! For the provision of accommodation for the 4 victims of fire outbreak in Moremi Hall! Stop the influx of EFCC and SARS on Great Ife campus! Support the coming NLC strike of October 16th! For a unitary anti-government strike of workers, students and the popular masses!

 

Free Sowore! Free Mandate! Free Jalingo!

 

Statement of the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard (RSV), OAU, 14th October, 2019, http://www.revolutionarysocialistvanguard.WordPress.com

 

 

 

 

It is pitiable that the university management has given scant response to the flood of last week at Ede road which claimed property of students and the lives of two persons. Flooding is a major problem which has bedeviled students residing in town from the onset of the accommodation policy. The more devastating one occurred in 2018, just weeks into the new session when students resumed to meet the heavy hand of the accommodation policy and it claimed scores of students valuables and rendered students homeless for days.

 

The menace of flooding is fast becoming a major contributor to the myriad of adverse conditions students are faced with at present. The walk way from Fajuyi bus stop to the entrance of Fajuyi hall is often waterlogged these days by the slightest shower of rain in such a manner that students find it difficult to use the walk way for fear of slipping or slumming. The T-junction at Fajuyi hall annex alongside major passages in academic area such as the one leading to ODLT I&II are likewise flooded.

 

In the same way, the management has given no tangible response to the plight of the Moremites who lost their room and property to the dastardly inferno that was caused by faulty electric connection in the room which the students had always reported to the hall management before then but received no feedback. It was the laxity of the hall management to take action concerning exposed wires coupled with the rule that only gas cylinders should be used that has resulted in the loss suffered by the students, yet no considerable action has been taken by the DSA to alleviate the suffering of those students. Rather our current management prides itself in fuming over plans to begin new white elephant projects in the media despite their failure to fulfill the promises they ceaselessly make to students since the inception of the accommodation policy like better welfarism for students due to decongestion of halls of residence; provision of ten thousand bedspcaes and the reinstatement of the students’ union. The resources, attention and time required for these fundamental necessities are rather diverted to projects which gulp millions of Federal government allocated funds like the Senate building currently in construction and the new plan to build an airstrip on the campus.

 

It seems as though the trait of misplacement of priorities is not only found amidst the crop of leaders that govern the school, it exists also amongst the Buhari led Nigerian government as the proposed 2020 budget indicates. The budget is a lucid description of the minuscule importance APC places on Nigerian students, more so, the Nigerian people. Of the close to 11 trillion naira budget only 2.45 trillion is budgeted for capital expenditure. About a third of the whole budget is allocated for the purpose of debt servicing. While the National Assembly gulps a whooping 125 billion naira; Education gets just 48 billion naira; health-46 billion naira; agriculture-80 billion naira; industry and infrastructure-40 billion naira.

 

What is worse is that of the 2.45 billion naira more than half will come from non-oil tax revenue of 1.81 billion naira. This means that president Buhari is not ready to give anything to the Nigerian people save the taxes he has ripped off from them through criminal hikes in bank charges, VAT and electricity tariffs. In retrospect, the amounts highlighted for public services for average Nigerians above do not add up to give 1.81 trillion naira of taxes and that means that the man from Daura is planning to use the remaining for phony projects and lip singing further pauperising the largest black population in the world.

 

He has also earmarked some funds for his equally decrepit predecessors such as ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, Olusegun Obasanjo and former head of state Ibrahim Babangida. That is why the NLC strike of October 16th must not be limited to the implementation of the 30, 000 minimum wage alone. We believe that this should represent the beginning of thorough and broad anti-government protests by the workers, students and popular masses with demands which reject completely the 2020 proposed budget and calls for the reversal in all proposed and imposed hikes in banking, the VAT system and for electricity tariffs. The bureaucracy of the Nigeria Labor Congress is corrupt and has compromised loyalties to the ruling class. Hence workers and the Nigerian people must give no trust to the Labour leadership. Workers, students and the popular masses must form committees of Action headed by delegates to keep the Labour leadership on their toes or even replace them.

 

For us, in the Vanguard, only a unitary struggle for democracy and economic amelioration can have an upper-hand over the lawless cult of brigands in Aso Rock. Labour, all civil societies and revolutionaries must join the struggle to preserve and bolster the vestiges of democracy left championed at this time by the Talk It Back movement of Omoyele Swore and the RevolutionNow movement headed by CORE. Students, workers and revolutionaries must unify the struggle for economic freedom with the struggle against the violation of human rights and the struggle of all marginalized peoples in Nigeria.

 

Students must not restrict their contribution to the struggle to their campuses alone rather synergies must be formed between all Nigerian campuses with workers’ unions and popular movements such as the TIB and CORE, for the impending NLC strike has every potential to truncate the academic calendars while the hikes in power tariffs can serve as a pretext for school fee increments by the managements. Thus, students must in their number show solidarity with the OAU3 on October 16th at the Okefia Magistrate court in Osogbo.

 

The TIB is becoming a platform of the Nigerian popular masses with great speed. However, revolutionaries must work to decentralize and redistribute the powers of the movement in order to turn it into a truly mass oriented and mass determined movement.

 

In any case the demands for a united front for change must include;

 

— The immediate release of Omoyele Sowore, Olawale Adebayo, and Agba Jalingo and all political prisoners. Drop the charges against OAU3 ( Omoloye Stephen, Owoeye Olaoluwa, Olawale Owolabi ), Osogbo5 and all persons arraigned in court for upholding democracy.

 

— The immediate implementation of the 30,000 naira minimum wage! The reversal of all hikes in the VAT, the bank transfer and deposit charges and the electricity tariffs.

 

— Reject the proposed 2020 budget!

 

— Fund education according to UNESCO recommendation!

 

— Reinstate Great Ife students’ union and unions on all Nigerian campuses!

 

— Provide accommodation for the victims of the fire-incident in Moremi Hall!

 

— No to EFCC and SARS on Nigerian campuses. Only the democratic governing of universities through functioning unions can guarantee the safety and security of lives and property in the university community!

 

For a world revolutionary socialist party!

 

 

 

Signed:

 

Branch secretary,

 

Jimoh Oladipupo (Ideal).