I would like to preface this piece with the following four declarations: One: My dominant interest in Election 2019 is the strengthening of the Nigerian Left in the country’s electoral and non-electoral politics. That is the only real change that can take place and that Nigerian masses deserve. Two: By the Left I mean the aggregate of socialism and popular democracy. This historical-ideological-political tendency is both anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist in orientation and logic. Three: Nigerian Leftism in the present historical epoch goes beyond being a “weapon of criticism”. It is also a programme of liberation. Four: The effectiveness of Left political interventions depends, to a large extent, on Leftists’ understanding of what is actually happening. This is an elementary service the Left owes itself. None of these declarations is new. They are only being pulled together for this piece.

This piece is a memo to the Nigerian Left. In an ideal situation, on account of the importance I attach to the subject, the document would have appeared, first, as an internal memo to an appropriate organ of the movement. For the same reason of importance, it would not have stopped at the organ or leadership level. The memo would have passed to the movement as a whole and, thereafter, to the public. 

One major problem limiting the national effectiveness and impact of the Nigerian Left in the country’s politics—at least since the end of the (1967-1970) Civil War—has been the contradictions (or “disconnect”) between organisation and programme. Put more concretely: The inability of the organisations of the Left to fully and satisfactorily accomplish the tasks they assign themselves through the employment of the structures, means and methods fashioned by them—and therefore available to them—has been a major limiting factor in its national effectiveness and impact in Nigerian politics. 

The aim here is to summarise my current position on the question of geopolitical restructuring of Nigeria. I say “current” because as far as I can remember, I started thinking seriously—and then debating and writing—about restructuring from 1986 as a member of the Political Bureau. Today, 32 years later, I am still thinking and writing on the subject. The present piece is implicitly a draft memo on this important political subject to the Nigerian Left. And, for the avoidance of doubt, the category “Nigerian Left” means the aggregate of socialism and popular democracy in Nigeria today.

The author, recalling his life experience as a young activist of the Left, calls on the Nigeria political Left to unite and prepare for the 2019 presidential in Nigeria.

One of the propositions of Leftists’ theory of history is that human beings are the makers of their own history. A corollary to this – that human beings do not make this history simply as they wish, but that they make it with materials and circumstances fashioned and transmitted by and from the past – is as important as the main thesis.

Edwin Madunagu argues that Nigeria needs a people's manifesto that would borrow from the political left's thinking and be a representative of the people's really demands.