Working-class organisation to take power is the only path forward to end banditry and terrorism
Aj Dagga Tolar, Movement for a Socialist Alternative (ISA in Nigeria)
(This article was first published on 27 December 2025)
The Christmas Day US airstrike in Sokoto ordered by Trump targeting terrorists in the northwestern part of Nigeria has been met with differing reactions. The very first is from the Tinubu regime, claiming it was a collaborative joint strike, even when Trump’s tweet categorically states that he ordered the hit on “ISIS terrorist scum(s)”.
How should the working masses regard the US airstrike? Definitely, there is nothing to celebrate or applaud the Tinubu regime for. If anything, it exposed the utter bankruptcy of the Tinubu regime and the entire crop of the ruling class as failures through and through, for its inability, over a period of more than a decade, to muster the necessary strength to deal with issues within its territorial borders as part of its oath of office to maintain the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country.
The Tinubu regime, with all of the wealth and resources of the country at its disposal, with the increased triple-revenue savings from its “subsidy is gone” May 29 2023 inauguration speech, huge earnings from crude oil, gas, loans, taxes etc, cannot fully subdue a rag tag armed group of individuals. This can only point out to the working masses that this regime cannot be trusted to end the terror threat that Boko Haram and other Islamic insurgent groups constitute.
The eight years of the Buhari regime witnessed little to no action in combating insecurity in the country, despite substantial budgetary allocations for security. Places like Southern Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, and Kogi were epicentres of insecurity, resulting in the loss of many lives of working people.
According to the Nigerian Security Tracker (NST), an independent database that tracks killings from violence and terrorism across the country, approximately 63,111 Nigerians were killed between 2015 and May 2023. Beacon Consulting, a security and research firm, reported that under the Tinubu government (May 2023 to 2024), approximately 13,346 people were killed, and approximately 9,207 were abducted.
What this means is that the Nigerian ruling elites, including former presidents Jonathan and Obasanjo, have failed to prioritise the security and safety of the people, a condition that is clearly stated in the constitution as the primary responsibility of those in government.
And yet the same Tinubu sends the military with fighters jets and land forces to Benin Republic amid an ongoing coup d’état and claimed victory over the failed military coup, presenting himself as a “defender of civil rule”. In reality, the Tinubu regime is propping itself up as a readily available hand maiden of French imperialism against the growing wave of anti-French protest over the continued domination of its former colonial territories. This also acts as a self-preservation mechanism to be ready against a coup attempt back at home, given a recent coup scare and arrest of some officers.
The point that needs to be made here is that the Nigerian state does not lack the capacity to decimate terror groups within Nigeria. But it will not. It cannot. The Tinubu regime has yet to respond to the query of the Kebbi state governor over the circumstances of the kidnapping of 25 school girls from Government Girls Schools in Kebbi, wherein the Vice Principal Hassan Yakubu Makuku was shot dead. Now the girls have been released, following the usual government approach of negotiations with kidnappers to secure release, in order to now organize a funfair of press activities, of course with watering mouthfuls of cash paid by government to the bandits.
The question posed by the Governor Nasir Idris still hangs in the air with regards to who ordered the withdrawal of troops stationed in the school following which allowed the kidnapping to successfully be executed by the bandits only an hour later. You can only logically point to the involvement of men high up. The top echelon of the military and indeed members of the ruling elites do not want the “war on terror” to end. It is an easy source of siphoning resources in the guise of security spending. One will not be far off the mark to state that they even partake in the sharing of the ransom paid. Otherwise they are profiting indirectly from the insecurity in the region, and exploiting it as a means to maintain power at the expense of the ordinary working masses.
In 2021, the Buhari regime paid the sum of $50,000 dollars cash (currently valued at N75 million naira) to bandits to retrieve a truck-mounted 12.7 caliber anti-aircraft gun that was capable of blowing the presidential plane out of the air, since the president was then planning a visit to his home state in Katsina. This is a soft approach of patting terrorists and bandits on the back to hold them in check, an easy way of settling the boys.
The refusal to end the continued and rabid capitalist domination of the key sectors of the economy by the corruption-inclined ruling elites, means that they are left with no other choice than to act the way they are acting to prevent these armed groups from directly becoming a major political force that will then turn their guns directly at them. They prefer the current situation of Sharia law driven by these groups, and pledge their indirect support for it, with the spurious implementation of Sharia in states in the north even though this violates the country’s constitutional provision as a secular state.
More fundamental is that capitalism condemns Nigeria to the lower rung of the world order, to be a consumer and a producer of raw materials for industrial West, US, China & Russia. This is what is largely responsible for the continued underdevelopment of the means of production, creating in turn a huge mass army of unemployed youths. The policies of deregulation of the economy results in huge social cuts, underfunding of education, health and other essentials, resulting in mass deprivations and inability of the working masses to access basic needs. Meanwhile public officials grow fat with huge largesse and free looting of the public treasury, benefiting directly from the chaos created allowing them to consolidate power and appropriate the very wealth of the country to develop it as their private possessions.
Since the return to so-called “democratic” rule in 1999, this entrenched system of corruption has allowed insecurity, mismanagement, and elite irresponsibility to persist. As a result, despite the country’s natural wealth and potential, poverty and underdevelopment continue to afflict the majority of the population, highlighting the stark contradictions of abundance under a predatory capitalist system.
This huge contradiction, whereby the supposed Giant of Africa is unable to muster the military might to deal with these armed groups, is not a merely military question. Therefore, no amount of greater force can end the insurgency, if the root cause is not tackled. Terrorism is not merely resolved by a greater military might. Without confronting the fundamental root cause of social deprivation suffered by the working masses, banditry, kidnapping, and terrorism will persist.
This explains why the working masses should not in any sense applaud Trump or the US whatsoever for the airstrike. Instead it must remain focused fully on the naked fact that the Tinubu regime, and indeed the entire crop of the ruling class does not have its interest at heart. Nigeria is coming closer to becoming a client state of the US. For Trump and US imperialism, Nigeria and Africa is purely an arena for power struggle over natural resources. The bombing is aimed to project military strength, internationally as well as for his supporters.
The working masses must therefore look to their own power and get organised. The Nigerian Labour Congress recently organised a date of protest against insecurity, it must now proceed further, to provide the necessary enlightenment to the working class to prepare itself for the leadership role for organising the working masses politically and posing the question of political power.
The call for the Tinubu regime to resign, and for an immediate convocation of a Sovereign National Conference/Constituent Assembly of the working masses to decide the way forward, will not be heeded by the Tinubu regime or any wing of the ruling class. This is why the working masses must act directly by putting in place a political party of working people. We must build a party of the millions and not a party for the millionaires and power jobbers as the current Labour Party has become. We must organize independently in the name of the working masses to win political power, and immediately bring about a planned economy that places the commanding heights of the economy under the democratic control and management of working people. In so doing, we can free up the resources with which to develop the means of production, fund infrastructural development, health, education, living wage and pension, unemployment allowance, democratic control of the police & military, with all public officials elected on the wages of an average skill worker and subject to immediate recall. This is what will end the continued descent of the country into the abyss. Trump’s airstrike doesn’t in any way threaten the corruption-infested ruling elites and the capitalist system which perpetuate poverty and underdevelopment.
