By joshua 
MOVEMENT OF THE PEOPLE AND PRP-VANGUARD: UNITING THE PEOPLE AND THE Z-GENERATION FOR THE LIBERATION OF NIGERIA
Distinguished Comrades,
Valued Veterans,
Great Workers,
Esteemed Youths,
Free Citizens,
Patriots, and
Media Workers
WELCOME to this National Assembly of the Movement of the People (MOP) and the PRP-VANGUARD, the authentic representatives of the working and toiling classes in Nigeria. Our movements have been in the forefront of the struggle for emancipation in this country for upwards of three generations. Each generation has passed the honourable torch of the struggle to the next. From the days of Fumilayo Ransom Kuti, Asabe Reza, Gambo Sawaba, Aminu Kano, Michael Imodu, Balarabe Musa, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and all the honourable ancestors, up to the present liberation generation, the cause has been the same: For the Liberation of Nigeria.
NOBLE ENDEAVOUR: To us this noble endeavour is a sacred call to duty. We shall not waver or blink, we will march forward with firm steps, holding our heads high, knowing fully well that our great ancestors did not sacrifice for this land in vain.
They confronted colonial and racist exploiters; native authority bullies; neocolonial autocrats; military dictators; petty bourgeois traitors; slavish minded snitches; state sponsored thugs and assassins; but never surrendered, and never betrayed the people.
WE ARE HERE TO CONTINUE THE STRUGGLE FOR A SOCIALIST NIGERIA with new vigour and unwavering determination. You may wish to ask, why socialism in a world dominated by capitalist enslavers? The answer is buried in our living history.
NATION-STATES have not always been there. They are recent historical creations. But once formed, they seek to live in perpetuity. At least, so the ruling classes and a sizable segment of the citizens tend to imagine. Nigeria was not created by Nigerians. It was the byproduct of what Eskor Toyo described as “historical accident”; that is, British colonial rule.
INDEPENDENCE: As you all know, nationalist forces joined together to win independence for the collective homeland that we still cherish as Nigeria. The first generation of nationalists fought to end colonial rule and promised the people a prosperous life in a free and sovereign African democratic state.
This is 65 plus years after: neither freedom nor development have been attained. We are now in the fourth Republic, after three was sacked by the military. Yet, our existence as a nation-state is still being contested by aggrieved groups in almost every region, most forcefully in the Southeast and the Northeast.
ECONOMY: The economic structure is not too different from what was inherited from colonial bondage: Export of raw materials and import of finished goods. Very little manufacturing value added to the gross domestic product (GDP). We remain an import dependent economy. Oil, gold, and, of recent, non-oil components, are our leading foreign exchange earners. Despite
massive opportunities in the digital sector, we are still unable to take full advantage of it due to poor network infrastructure, outdated educational system, and irregular electricity supply.
POLITY: The pendulum here had swung from civilian to military rule intermittently. Democratic consolidation is what we expected 25 years after entry into this Republic. Alas, we are steamrolling into ‘illebralism’: contraction of the political space; dominant party autocracy; silencing civil society; and coopting the legislature by the executive. Instead of separation of powers, we have fusing of ruling class interests. Law makers, like the executives, have abdicated their responsibilities to the people. Together both sides aggrandise for self enrichment. Development is abandoned across the country.
MASS POVERTY is the death spiral ruling the daily lives of 139 million people. Both the government and the World Bank are agreed that poverty has spiked since 1999 when the country returned to civilian rule.
Nigerians are amongst the poorest people in the world, with the highest maternal mortality rate, and a declining life expectancy, in an insecure and violent socio-economic environment, where public services do not work, as public administration is in retreat, while the private capture of the state is advancing with full government backing.
DYING REPUBLIC: This Republic is dying. It is being killed by its primary beneficiaries: The ruling political elites. This class run public office for personal gain, not the common good. The common good logic has disappeared from public expenditure calculations. That partly explain why the presidency showed more interest in acquiring yacht, presidential jet, and privileges for the first lady, than homes, hospitals, and a living wage for the working and toiling people. Governors across the country are replicating this personal enrichment model right down to the local government level.
GENERALISED INSECURITY, secessionist threats, state violence against dissenters, widespread material deprivations, and public service collapse, are consequences of the exploitative social order that most Nigerians are desperately trying to escape from.
ORGANISING FOR POWER: We in the Movement of the People (MOP) and the PRP-Vanguard (PRP-V) are convinced that the situation is not hopeless or irredeemable. We can collectively take our destiny into our own hands. The ruling regime and its class enablers can be defeated in a free and fair election. This can be done where the class conscious masses are organised and consistently working for power through their own political parties and social movements. And that precisely is what we offer in the coming together of the MOP and the PRP-Vanguard.
WHAT WE STAND FOR: We are committed to the social transformation of Nigeria, from its existing dependent and backward neo-liberal capitalist system, to a people’s oriented development trajectory that is fit for a cooperative life in the rest of this century. This we see as the transitional stage, involving the rapid development of the productive forces, towards a democratic socialist society.
Here public policy must centre on the needs of the people, not the greed of billionaires.
Where the existing ruling class offer tribal politics, we offer working class solidarity; where they bring you religious bigotry, we present critical thinking; where they impose myths of ethnic superiority, we reply with evidence of ethnic unity in diversity; and where they try to deceive you with superstition, we expose their lies with mass science education and empirical evidence.
Whereas the bourgeois privatised and captured public enterprises, we will fight to re-nationalise and return them back to sovereign ownership and control. Wherever land is dispossessed, we will struggle to restore land justice. And where public education, health, housing, transport, and communication are in dilapidation, we will intensify the struggle to rehabilitate, reconstruct, and put these services within the reach of the people, not as a privilege but as human rights.
LET NO ONE DECEIVE YOU INTO EMBRACING A SECESSIONIST AGENDA. It is a death trap. No tiny Republic carved out of present day Nigeria will become powerful in the globe in this century. The powerful imperial nations are already large and advanced technologically, industrially, and politically. Newly carved out units out of our already over fragmented continent will not likely be prosperous, or be any more sovereign than Nigeria is at present. Such carve-outs will only add to the vulnerability of Africa in a world where neo-imperial powers are fast retreating from humanity and embracing 19th century dispositions in their relations with the global south. The New Barbarian Manifesto is a foot. We need regional, continental, and tri-continental working class unity to confront it.
THE MOVE TOWARDS A MULTIPOLAR WORLD IS NOT WITHOUT RISK for developing countries. The return to big power rivalry has implication for nations, such as Nigeria, that have rendered their masses extremely poor, internally divided, unstable, militarily weak, and ruled by self serving neocolonial elites.
This is another historic challenge before us. We therefore call on the youth, particularly the Gen-Z, to join the Movement of the People and the PRP-Vanguard in order to advance our shared struggle for a democratic socialist Nigeria.
WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO REPEAT PAST FAILURES. The neo-liberal capitalist system has failed. Sixty five years of neocolonial rule has cost us a bloody civil war, military coups, collapsed republics; high debt burden; and, currently, grappling with internecine banditry, terrorism, insurgency, and virulent separatism.
Today Nigeria, along with South Sudan, has the largest number of poor youths per capita in the world. This signify a bitter truth: That the active population is facing arrested development. We must break this barrier to human progress by putting our own political party on the ballot in 2027. The Movement of the People must be registered for the coming general election. Democratic Socialism must be on the ballot.
THE MOP is for the Liberation Generation. PRP-Vanguard is for the ‘talakawa.’ Together we are for the Liberation of Nigeria. We are for a Socialist Nigeria.
Thank you all.
Viva Nigeria!
Viva Africa!!
Signed:
1. Seun Anikulapo Kuti,
Afrobeat Global Superstar and Chair, MOP
2. Comrade Abdulmajid Y. Daudu,
Chair, PRP-Vanguard; Chair, Nigeria Patriotic Front Movement (NPFM); Working Class Rights Defender
3. Comrade A. A. Valley,
Diaspora Organiser and Networker
4. Comrade A. Oloye
Diaspora Organiser and Networker
5. Mallam A. Malam
Patron