JOINT WORLD PRESS CONFERENCE OF THE CONVERGENCE FOR A WORKING PEOPLE'S POLITICAL ALTERNATIVE (COPA) AND ALLIED FORCES HELD ON 3RD MARCH 2023 AT THE FOYER, FEDERAL HIGH COURT COMPLEX, ABUJA, FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY OF NIGERIA.

3RD MARCH 2023.

2023 ELECTIONS: A CONTRIVED OUTCOME AND ITS FALLOUT: WE OPPOSE ATTEMPTS TO DRIVE THE WORKING PEOPLE INTO ETHNO-RELIGIOUS BLOODSHED.

Salutation

We welcome esteemed members of the Press to this important World Press Conference where we intend to examine unfolding events in the nation's electoral politics and its impending consequences. 

We state categorically the following:

1. WE REJECT THE ELECTORAL FRAUD OF 25TH FEBRUARY, 2023.

We reject in its entirety the monumental fraud perpetrated in the 25th February 2023 presidential election that produced Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared winner, with a Certificate of Return issued to him in that regard.

We are dismayed that despite INEC's N40bn annual budget, and over N305bn allocation from the federal government to conduct the 2023 elections, it failed to ensure that the BVAs worked at polling units as promised by the chairman of the national electoral body, and as required by law under the Electoral Act, 2022.

We are quick to observe that the two most important reforms introduced by the Electoral Act, 2022, are the use of BVAS for the accreditation of voters, and the Electronic  Transmission of Results. The question to ask is, how come the same device that worked effectively in most polling units across the nation during voter accreditation exercise, suddenly failed in the transmission of results during the presidential election?

We also condemn the violent attacks on voters in Lagos, Rivers State, Kano State, and the Federal Capital Territory among others, in various parts of the country.

We hold that the said presidential election must be set aside, and a fresh and credible election be conducted under a more transparent and accountable INEC leadership. The present INEC leader and his team have lost public trust both at home and abroad. He has shamed Nigeria in the eyes of the world and must vacate his office for electoral justice to be seen to reign.

2. WE ALERT THE WORKING CLASS TO THE STRUGGLE AHEAD IF TINUBU AND HIS PLUTOCRATS PREVAIL.

We eagerly alert the working class to the long and bitter struggle ahead should Bola Ahmed Tinubu eventually prevails as President-elect given his anti-working people's antecedents. His neo-liberal manifesto is a glaring threat to the welfare of millions in the working class. No wonder London and Washington wasted no time in endorsing him. Imperialism always certifies its puppets.

Despite the traumatic effects of the Naira redesign policy on the toiling masses, Tinubu has assured local capital and the imperialist elites that he will inflict fuel subsidy removal on the working people, irrespective of any protests they might embark upon. 

3. LABOUR PARTY MUST BE TRANSFORMED FROM A CAPITALIST-LED PARTY TO A WORKING-CLASS PARTY.

We hold that the massive votes for the Labour Party in places such as Lagos State, the Federal Capital Territory, Nassarawa, Plateau, and other Southern States, reflect the deep hunger of the toiling masses for a genuine working people's political alternative.

However, that alternative, as we warned prior to the elections, is not embodied in Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate, who represents, in both programme and political orientation, capitalist interests, just as the People's Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress. Peter Obi, like his PDP and APC counterparts, is bent on pursuing fuel subsidy removal, no matter the pain on the working poor. 

We hereby warn that the alignment of the Labour Party with the People's Democratic Party will further alienate the Party from its working-class voters, and integrate its elites with that of the APC government.

Aside from a few revolutionary socialist cadres that stood as candidates on the platform of the Labour Party, majority of those who emerged victorious from the platform of the Party do not share any revolutionary socialist commitment. 

Therefore, unless the Labour Party transforms itself into a fully-fledged working class-oriented party on a socialist programme, it will end up being dominated by rightists, opportunists, and mercantilist profit-seekers, who will abandon the Party after entering elective offices for the main capitalist parties with the Party left in limbo.

We use this opportunity to urge the working class majority, especially youthful voters, mostly regarded as "Obidients" to be prepared for more betrayals from their bourgeois obidient leaders, Peter Obi and Datti Ahmed. The base of the party must be prepared to explore revolutionary socialist ideas, which remain the way out of our present capitalist dead end.

4. THERE WAS A LEFT ALTERNATIVE ON THE BALLOT: THE AAC-PRP ALLIANCE.

We must assert categorically that there was a left alternative on the ballot in the presidential election in form of the Joint Electoral Ticket of the People's Redemption Party (Vanguard)  and the African Action Congress, with the person of Omoyele Sowore as its candidate.

However, media blackout, conscious state isolation, and sabotage, including pseudo-left sequestration, especially for the AAC, gave this left alternative low votes in the election.

As for the PRP, the right-wing hijackers holding the formal structures of the Party by the jugular ensured that its revolutionary ranks were isolated from a direct role in the electoral field. By submitting a largely pro-state element to INEC, the right wing of the Party denied its humanist-oriented presidential candidate the chance to be in the race. The abysmal result is therefore no surprise to anyone. But the struggle waged by the AAC-PRP Alliance stamped the authority of the left on both the ballot and the entire political landscape. This served as a major platform for political education and revolutionary ideas. 

5. NO TO ETHNO-RELIGIOUS DIVISIONS.

With the aftermath of the presidential and national assembly elections, the latest ploy of the fighting sections of the ruling class is to appeal to ethnic and religious sentiments.

We urge the working people to stand firmly together against ethno-religious divisions.

6. LEFT FRONT: THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE.

We, the undersigned left-leaning political parties and revolutionary organisations, hereby call on the entire left and working people's movement in Nigeria to come together and collectively construct a formidable Left Front that will scale up the struggle of the working masses for the enthronement of a people's democracy in Nigeria. The existing plutocracy is not just an existential threat to nationhood, it is a clear and present danger to any form of qualitative development amongst the working people. Our call for rolling out a Left Front, therefore, becomes urgent in the face of the steep governance deadlock that has brought the ruling elites to their wits' end, and the country to stagnation. 

We have deep assurances of support not just of the working people at home, but of the international working class movement as well. Our assigned revolutionary task is one that history has imposed on our generation. We must take decisive and purposeful action to fulfill it together. 

7. NOTHING BUT A REVOLUTIONARY WORKING PEOPLE'S GOVERNMENT, BUILT ON A SOCIALIST PROGRAMME, CAN SALVAGE THE DIRE SITUATION IN NIGERIA TODAY. 

We are committed to building a rolling revolutionary mass movement to bring into power a revolutionary working people's government on a firm socialist programme that will place the enormous resources of society into the hands of the working people through nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy. This is the only way to halt the speedy race to the abyss that the ruling elite is pushing the working people to.

Solidarity is power. 

We thank you all for listening.

SIGNED:

AYO ADEMILUYI 

Co-Chairperson, COPA.

(For and on behalf of the Convergence for A Working People's Political Alternative (COPA) and Allied Forces)

E-SIGNED:

KUNLE WISEMAN AJAYI

Co-Chairperson, Convergence for A Working People's Political Alternative (COPA)

COMRADE ABDULMAJID YAKUBU DAUDU

National Chairperson, People's Redemption Party (PRP-Vanguard)

DR. SANI SALIH MUSTAPHA

Presidential Candidate, People's Redemption Party (PRP-Vanguard)

GBENGA KOMOLAFE

General Secretary, Federation of Informal Workers' Organisations of Nigeria (FIWON)

KAYODE SALAKO

For: Revolutionary Socialist Movement