The late Professor Abubakar Momoh was fond of asserting the point about putting our thoughts in writing. He would say, ‘Go and put it down’. At the time, one didn’t understand why it would be so important to go about putting everything in writing. But Momoh knew what he was saying except that, very much unlike him who usually cross-referenced nearly every of his assertions, he didn’t do that with this very regular statement of his. So, the temptation to take it as a case of idiosyncrasy overwhelmed me and one never made much of it.
Mrs Angela Odah, Nigeria Programme Manager of Rosa Luxembourg Foundation
But now it is clear. He had in mind the articulatory and, therefore, the reality producing character of writing, speaking, or communication generally. It is that which made both philosophers and statesmen to fear writing, speaking and communication throughout human history, the fear that explains all maneuvers in statecraft and laws aimed at restricting and determining who can write, speak or communicate in the public sphere. In Nigeria, the memories of Decree 4 are still strong.
The foregone establishes the accomplishment it is for Rosa Luxembourg Foundation in Nigeria to put out three publications in one day, all dealing with some of the most manifestations of social dislocation in contemporary Nigeria. The texts are as listed in the banner part of the cover picture.
As Doyin Ojesipe, a member of Panel 3 which reviewed the text on The impacts of farmers- herders farmers crisis on the quality of life of women and girls in IDP camps in central Nigeria pointed out, there is hardly any difference in the sense of quality of life for many women between life in IDP camps and life in their own homes because of patriarchy-directed orientation. Nevertheless, a large number of IDP camps in North Central Nigerian society is indicative of the state of emergency Nigeria has been since 1999, beginning with a wave of horrific ethno-religious violence in Badagry, Idi-Araba, Kaduna, Jos, then insurgency in the Niger Delta, Boko Haram insurgency since 1999 right to secessionist politics its current form in the Southeast, then banditry and kidnapping for ransom.
Within that larger continuum are more specific sites of conflict such as the violence in Bwari and the Sit -at-home protestation in the Southeast too. Then there is a completely different kind of violence involving extra-ordinarily unequal power relations between a set of workers and their employees. This is the category of domestic workers or househelps.
As Prof Wariso Alli put it, on this category of workers rests the functioning of the economy but they are the least compensated. In fact, their compensation system rests exclusively on their employers and their exercise of discretion on what to pay them, what to oblige them, how much of humanity to grant or deny them and even whether to fulfil their own part or the bargain or not. Yet, the number involved in this category of work is substantial.
Panelist Comrade Hauwa Mustapha of the NLC brought An equally sharp angle to it by disclosing authoritatively (as an NLC researcher, campaigner and a Northwesterner) that the typical domestic worker is a 16 year old girl-child who has most likely been married and divorced three times. Another lady in the audience whose name did not come through brought yet the identity shocker to it: majority of the domestic workers in the northwest of Nigeria are of Nupe extraction from Niger, Kwara and Kogi states in central Nigeria.
Another of the books
There is thus nothing reckless in comparing any study of the details of abuses that domestic workers experience in Nigeria with a classic such as Engels’ The Conditions of the Working Class in England or Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. And it means that, in paying attention to the conditions of domestic workers in contemporary Nigeria to the point of funding researching of it, Rosa Luxembourg Foundation is making a statement on subjectivity and modernity in today’s Nigeria.
As God would have it, there were three established professors to oversight the deliberations. They were Prof Etanibi Alemika who chaired the massive book presentation, Prof Joy Ezeillo, a Women in Nigeria (WIN) warrior of yesteryears and Prof Wariso Alli. There was an appreciable presence from the labour constituency, particularly Gabriel Kayode Ojo from the National Union of Hotels and Personnel Services Workers and Dr. Muntaka Abdulraúf from the NLC who came with emancipatory vocabulary for discussing domestic workers. There was the Betty Abba contingent from Lagos. Betty Abba is a one woman riot-squad when it comes to gender advocacy and campaigning. It is hoped that herself, Prof Alemika and Rosa Luxembourg Foundation in Nigeria would be able to sit down and reconcile the differences between her stand on unionising domestic workers and that of Prof Alemika.
Alemika cautioned against the enthusiasm about unionising domestic workers on the ground that it could trap them into the formal system which, as everybody knows, is not working for Nigeria if we look at unending controversies around NNPC, CBN, the Ports Authority, etc. What Alemika would want to see is a Domestic Workers Law, not unionisation.
Prof Alemika returned to epistemological concerns raised by Dr Saeed Hussein, outgone Acting Director of CDD -WA who served on Panel 1 but whose point on that theme echoed throughout in other panels. Alemika’s position is that we need to strengthen social science methodology across Nigeria. That case for strengthening methodology brought back a 1999 proposal which is the simplest and near cost-free way the death of methodology in Nigerian universities could have been dealt with. But what is the chance that the Tinubu administration can implement that proposal when the less challenged Obasanjo regime could not, although there is no confirmation that Obasanjo was ever personally made aware of the proposal. Well, Prof Alemika is still alive and the Tinubu regime has a chance of reinventing itself by embracing the suggestion. The regime is in so much trouble that it needs such an original initiative, notwithstanding the dangerous ruling class consensus to do away the universities. If not for such a consensus, how could Obasanjo and Buhari – they are supposed to be quarrelling – have the same approach to the problem of a functional national university system?
Dr Claus Konig speaking at the conversation
When Alemika, Betty and Rosa Luxembourg Foundation meet to reconcile standpoints on unionising domestic workers, there are two more persons who should be there – Hauwa Mustapha and Prof Alli. Apart from his point about the whole society resting on domestic workers but denying them, Alli gave an example of where that’s not the case; Brazil. Brazil approved a domestic worker regime in 2013, he says, regulating the process with particular reference to hours of work, rise in pay and even right to holiday. The poverty level crashed in Brazil subsequently because it meant a rise in the income level of a large number of that set of workers. It is something he believes Nigeria can replicate accordingly. Otherwise Nigeria would continue to be one of the most traumatised societies in the world, the point that Dame Ene Ede was harping on. That comes about because a society of domestic workers left to their own limits would be a society of so many unheard screams, screams of voices that cannot make themselves heard, a set of workers who have no alternatives, having become their respective family’s strategy of relief from poverty, to paraphrase Hauwa Mustapha.
A short report like this cannot capture everything that was said in a 4 – hour long session. So, it remains to capture just the favourable impression of Angel Odah and her team running Rosa Luxembourg Foundation in Nigeria by most speakers in relation to the consistency in publishing texts on hot issues and themes as well as making students part of the book presentation exercise. Students of Political Science and of Peace and Conflict Studies from Veritas University, Abuja have consistently been part of it for a long time now which is a progressive way of colonising the future.
It means that Mrs Odah and her team are turning the foundation to one of the few civil society platforms which grounds their advocacy battles in conceptual, methodological and critical clarifications in the age of politics of meaning but which enemies of democracy and inclusiveness have mischievously called the post- truth era. Interestingly, Dr. Claus Dieter Konig, the Regional Representative of Rosa Luxembourg Foundation was at the book presentation in Abuja. More than that, Dr. Konig is not a total stranger to Nigeria and her culture of debate, having sipped from it at the University of Ibadan, Usman Dan Fodio University in Sokoto, Bayero University, Kano and a few others at some point in the past.
It was a half-day well spent!
