ON the 8th of August 2021, Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) veterans, and their successors in the people’s redemption party (PRP) across Nigeria, will converge in Kano state to commemorate seventy one years since the formation of their anti-feudal, anti-colonial, and anti-imperialist political movement.
The NEPU came into being first, as Northern Elements progressive Association (NEPA), formed in Kano on the 1st of December 1946. The association was, however, swiftly disbanded by the British colonial rulers, and its leadership thrown out of government jobs.
Members of the association later resurrected themselves as NEPU to continue their struggle for a free, prosperous, united, and independent Nigeria.
*The Eight-Plus-2 Historic Pioneers*
Eight-plus-two frontline individuals, committed to the unity of Nigeria, rejected the British attempt to exploit constitutional contraptions in 1950 to divide Nigerians along regional lines, put in place what became known as the NEPU on Tuesday, 8th August 1950.
The young and defiant eight-plus-two historic fighters were: Abba Maikwaru, Abdulkadir Danjaji, Babaliya Manaja, Bello Ijumu, Garba Bida, Magaji Dambatta, Mudi Sipikin, and Musa Kaula; plus Sa’adu Zungur, and Aminu Kano as background guides.
These young, vibrant, and determined men, refused to be ‘siloed’ and cut off from the rest of Nigeria. They opted to cross the river Niger and reached out to like minded political actors outside their home region, the north.
*The Mission*
In the landmark Sawaba Declaration the NEPU stated its determination to work with the _talakawa_ to win political power and convert government “from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation”.
It held that, “all political parties are but the expression of class interest”, with NEPU representing the interest of the masses and, as such, “diametrically opposed to the interest of all sections of the master class, both white and black”.
With the battle lines drawn NEPU members came under attack not just from the British white dictators, but from the emirate aristocracies as well, particularly the emirs, whom in 1950 at the Ibadan Conference, “threatened secession”.
*Defending Nigeria’s Unity*
The northern elements countered this threat and reshaped the political narrative from a north-south confrontation of Muslims versus Christians, to a class struggle in which the ruling oligarchs were robbing the talakawa and enriching themselves and their families as over privileged units.
*The Struggle Continues*
Seventy one years on, this struggle to free the talaka has become more urgent than ever before. The condition of the poor in today’s Nigeria is far worse then it was in 1950. And to attain the standard of living we had in 1960, it will take us another 25 to 50 years of clean government and hard work as a nation-state.
This we do not have at present, and we are unlikely to see in the near future with the existing band of power holders at the centre and state levels, be they APC or PDP.
The take home for the millennial (those born between 1984 and 1995) and post-millennial (those presently under 22 years of age) generation here is this: you have no future under our present rulers. Your today and tomorrow are sealed. Neither APC nor PDP, in whatever form they may wish to rename themselves, or rebrand their image, or even disguise their identity with front-parties, their ugly results in government will not change until we rebell against the system, just as the historic and defiant 8+2 NEPU patriots did in 1950 when they opposed the British dictators and the puppet local aristocracies.
Recall that the NEPU 8+2 waged their struggles not by resorting to identity bigotry: tribe, religion, or region; or by subverting national unity, but by focusing their political firepower on the real enemy of the toiling masses: the colonial overlords and the neocolonial cleptocrats.
The NEPU 8+2 joined forces with other nationalists in the country to throw out the colonial autocrats, and continued the battle against neocolonialism after independence, a struggle that is still nogoing.
*The NEPU Spirit and the Millennial and Post Millennial Generations*
This spirit of principle driven fight for human dignity, democracy, and self-development that galvanised the first generation NEPU youths is what some of the ‘oldies’ who have lost their way are now telling us is old fashioned and unworkable. Others even spout the bourgeois cliche that the class struggle is out moded and no longer relevant, giving the false impression that social classes have magically vanished from history.
These disillusioned grey sellouts did join the PDP train in 1999, and when that party lost Aso Rock (but not power entirely) in 2015, they rallied behind the APC, changing colours by the tide. They call this carpet-crossing, ‘iya ruwa’. In effect, they know how to swim in Nigeria’s murky politics, where remaining afloat in the high corridors of looting is the only ‘principle’ that matters. Anything else is, they tell us, “a curse”.
Be not seduced by this ‘iya ruwa’ mantra of the grey sellouts. It is restricted to their rent seeking households. They are now part-and-parcel of the barbarian system that has reduced millions of millennials and post-millennials to abject wretchedness and hopelessness.
Those amongst the younger generation who still harbour some flickers of hope are daily trying to escape from this gulag like federation.
But the escape routes are limited. The western countries are in steep crisis, rotten to the core, with the same pirate capitalist class robbing the multitudes to augument the billionaire class.
That leaves Asia and the Middle East as the next escape routes. Here too recession is claiming economic victims amongst the working class. Worst still, the Covid-19 endless jab and social disruption has brought poverty and joblessness to the doorstep of millions.
The only place left for young Nigerians to escape to is ‘home’. And home can mean anything, from separatist ‘dreamland micro-gulags’ such as Biafra, Oduwa, Arewa, Middle Belt, and Niger Delta enclaves, to ‘big brother Nija’ itself, bad as it is.
The spirit of the NEPU 8+2 patriots speaks to the millennials and after with a voice of hope, courage and resilience. It says to these seemingly entitled, self-centred, unfocused, instant gratification seekers, and individualistic lot, as these generations are often characterised, that they have no option but to mobilise and organise, as the NEPU 8+2 did to take on the mighty colonialist Brits, and with like mines nationalist actors of those days, to ‘chase the crazy baldheads out of Aso Rock’.
The youth of today possess tools of networking and social organisation that previous generations could not even dream of. Instead of blarbing and chatting over trivia, millennials, who can afford it, must use their smartphones to fight against tribal hatred, religious profiling, separatism, banditry, and war mantra that is likely to engulf them more than any other generation in Nigeria.
Like the defiant NEPU youths of old, millennials and generation Z must form or join radical left oriented political movements with clear commitment to propagate and fight for regime change in the country through the ballot.
Nigerian millennials and generation Z’s (21 years and under) have all to gain if the country remains united, democratic, and prosperous, under a corrupt free, people centred, detribalised, and inclusive government, driven by the pulse and needs of the talaka, and not the insatiable greed of the oligarchs. This NEPU inspired Nigerian dream was not just worth fighting for 71 years ago, when it was first articulated, it is more so today when the nation is on the precipice.
The millinial and post-milennial generations have a duty to accomplish this noble mission. It is their historic duty to live in freedom, dignity and prosperity in this century. Therefore, the Z and millennial generations must picture it, fight for it, and make social transformation happen. That is the true spirit of the NEPU that this generation can imbibe and alter their lives for the common good.
