Article by Yossi Schwartz, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 2 May 2020, www.thecommunists.net

 

Even some scientists understand that the lockdown might be far more dangerous than the virus.

 

“An investigation might show that the growth in the number of death cases related to lockdown is higher than the death cases related to COVID-19,” the paper said. “It may have a similar effect to ‘Iatrogenesis’ in medicine, a phenomena where the medicine is more detrimental than the disease itself (…) Expected consequences of the lockdown include enormous unemployment, isolation and loneliness, low access to healthcare, drug abuse and domestic violence, hunger and social unrest.” (1)

 

Africa, the birthplace of the human race, has been plundered for hundreds of years by different robbers aided by corrupted chiefs and modern bourgeois politicians. Today when humanity is facing three crises - economical, political and medical - it is more than likely that the peoples of Africa will suffer from these three combined disasters caused by the decaying, rotten capitalist system more than people in other parts of the world.

 

At the same time, the working class and the poor in Africa will be at the front line of the class struggle because they have fewer illusions in 'their' corrupted governments. Those are not able to hide behind the explanation of coronavirus in order to cover political and economic plans to attack the democratic rights and the social gains as easily as it happens in other parts of the world. The African masses have suffered from slavery, colonialist exploitations before the formal independence, and from the imperialist super-exploitation then after. Today, they suffer from imperialist super-exploitation,  imperialist wars,  corrupted local governments and the policies of these government that cost so many lives. There is a popular saying these days that capture the essence of the situation: “The  Corona is the virus, capitalism is the plague.” It is just a matter of short time that the peoples of Africa will rise up against the attacks. In this struggle, the workers and oppressed of Nigeria (the most populated country in Africa) is likely to become a leading force.

 

Slavery and Colonialism

 

While studies of slavery usually examine the slavery of transatlantic slavery, the trading of human beings began already in the ancient slave societies. The ancient Egyptians had slaves, as did the other early societies of that historical period, including Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome. Slavery existed in many ancient societies but before Greece slaves were rare, only owned by powerful families. The first true slave society was ancient Greece.

 

It is estimated 90% of the population of democratic Athens were slaves respectively former slaves as the economy was based on the slavery mode of production. The slaves worked in construction, fields, and even in teaching crafts and arts.
In ancient Rome the ruling class used slave labor to build roads and temples and slave worked even in merchants' shops. Rome became the most developed slave society at that time. Yet there was a difference between the slavery of the ancient empires and the slavery of the transatlantic.   Slaves in ancient societies were those who lost the war or sold to slavery because of debs. This was true in Rome and the Byzantine Empire even after Christianity became the state religion. Since the slaves in Rome were those who lost the war, slavery was not rationalized by racial origin.

 

The Romans used the term “Natio” so that slave owners know to which people respectively tribe the slaves belonged. People and tribes more resistant against the Roman Empire equalled potentially resistant slaves in the eyes of the slaveholders. According to the Roman law: “Those who sell slaves must state the natio [place of origin] of each at the sale; for the natio of a slave frequently encourages or deters a prospective buyer; hence it is advantageous to know his natio, since it is reasonable to suppose that some slaves are good because they originate from a tribe that has a good reputation, and others bad because they come from a tribe that is a rather disreputable Edict of the Aediles.” (2)

 

The “Natio” could change from negative to positive or from positive to negative in the lifetime of the slave based on the relations between the Roman Empire and his or hers tribe. Although there were also black slaves in Rome, the majority of slaves were not Africans and the slaves from Africa were not seen as an inferior race in any regard. Slavery was seen as the logical outcome of economic desperation or lost wars and had nothing to do with race at that time.

 

After a victorious battle, the Roman generals handed over the captives to an official who sold them at auction to traders who followed the armies. To give some examples: “In 177 BC, during his campaign in Sardinia, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus killed or enslaved 80,000 of the island's inhabitants. In 167 BC the Roman senate granted the victorious Roman general in Greece the right to sack seventy cities on the west coast of Greece: 150,000 persons were enslaved.” (3)

 

The Roman politician, rhetor and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero, following a victory during his governorship of Cilicia, gave his soldiers all the plunder except the captives whom he sold.

 

On 19 December 51 BC he wrote: "as I write, there are about 120,000 sesterces ( a Roman coin) on the platform." (...) In the war against Judea  66-70 CE, 97,000 people were enslaved.” (4)

 

Bondage rather than slavery existed in Africa. In West Africa until about 600 CE most people were hunter-gatherers. In the driest areas, they raised sheep, goats, cattle, or camels. In the wooded area near the equator, farmer raised yams, palm products, or plantains. The savanna areas yielded crops including rice, millet and sorghum. Famine or fear of stronger enemies forced one tribe to ask another for help and give themselves in bondage in exchange for assistance. Only after 600 CE, the level of the forces of production developed to a point that class society developed in the form of bondage.

 

Unlike slavery, bondage is similar to the European serf system. Typically, these servants became a part of the extended tribal family. However, there is some evidence of chattel slavery, in which people considered personal property, in the Nile Valley. It appears there was a slave-trade route through the Sahara that brought sub-Saharan Africans to Rome.

 

The large scale of the slave trade of the Africans began in the middle of the 15th century by Portugal as part of the accumulation of capital and continued until the 19th century. It  devastated Africa and enriched European and North American capitalists and plantation owners. The Portuguese slave traders were the first to kidnap people from the West Coast region of Africa and to take those they enslaved back to Europe. It is estimated that by the early 16th century 10% of Lisbon's population was of African descent. After the European discovery of the American continent, the demand for African slaves gradually grew.

 

The Spanish took the first African captives from Europe to the American contintent as early as 1503 and already by 1518 the first captives were shipped directly from Africa to America. The majority of African captives were exported from from Senegal, Angola, Nigeria and Cameroon.

 

Capturing people and enslaving them became easier for the slave traders because some African chiefs and kings collaborated with the slave traders. Already eleven years ago, the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria has written to tribal chiefs stating: “We cannot continue to blame only the white men, as Africans, particularly the traditional rulers, are not blameless.” (5)

 

The forced removal of tens of millions of people from the continent by the European, the Arab and the Jewish slave traders had a major effect on the growth of the population in Africa. It is estimated that from 1500 to 1900, the population of Africa remained stagnant or declined.

 

The weakening of the Africans due to the slave trade facilitated the occupation of Africa, the theft of its natural resources and the exploitation of the black workers and farmers by the colonialists.

 

To quote a student of Frantz Fanon: “(...)colonialism in Africa started in the nineteenth century. It was systemic violence—organized, continuous, methodic, and willful. It was not only integral to capitalism, but also coexistent with racism, cultural domination, and European self-aggrandizement.

Whereas slavery focused on exploiting isolated and captive individuals, the submission and exploitation of entire populations required sophisticated methods and numerous agents. The first point of colonial assault was the occupation of land by force of arms. Taking control of the land provided colonizers the raw materials they needed and geopolitical advantage in the competition among themselves for colonies. After the occupation of the land, control of the population followed to acquire not only cheap or free labor and market for manufactured goods, but also the erosion of social bonding, indigenous beliefs, values, identities, and indigenous knowledge. Colonialists achieved this by using different agents including missionaries, anthropologists, physicians, and journalists. Since violence and outsiders' propaganda alone cannot sustain oppression, colonizers resorted to local agents to carry out the colonial mission. The most important of these were individuals educated in colonial schools or serving as subordinates in the colonial system. These so-called local elites inherited the colonial state whose function was not to serve the colonized but to exploit them.” (6)

 

Imperialism

 

Imperialism is the last stage of capitalism as Lenin pointed out in his book 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism' which was written in 1916 and published in 1917.

 

 

Generally speaking, Imperialism takes the form of political control, creating economic dependence and super-exploitation. The same type of local elite that served the colonialists have been serving the imperialists. 
Africa is a very rich continent with resources of gold, diamonds, oil and other rare metals but the control of the continent by imperialists aided by the local capitalists is the reason for the poverty of the peoples of Africa. This enforced poverty is turning Africa into a death trap for many millions in the time of the coronavirus, not so much from the pandemic but rather from the social and political conditions aggravated by the lockdown.

 

The imperialists owe trillions of dollars to Africa because of these plunders. It doesn't bring an advance of the conditions for the African peoples if they pay the debts which is another form of robbery.

 

By 2018, African government external debt payments have doubled in two years, from an average of 5.9% of government revenue in 2015 to 11.8% in 2017. 20% of African government external debt is owed to China. 17% of African government external interest payments are made to China. In contrast, 32% of African government external debt is owed to private lenders, and 35% to multilateral institutions such as the World Bank. 55% of external interest payments are to private creditors.(7)

 

Since the last few years the World Bank faced a situation where the loans have been payed back by the African countries in a way that independence from this parasitic imperialist organization was in sight. Luckily for the World Bank, COVID-19 was declared a severe pandemic (by health authorities paid also by World Bank) and the imperialist parasite offered to delay the payback of the debts respectively offered even bigger loans to the African continent.(8)

 

Immediate cancelation of all debts and instead massive reperation payments to the African peoples for the centuries of slavery, robbery of resources and exploitation of its workforce is the “help” that should come from imperialist institutions and countries. Not loans which are just a trick for another form of robbery.

 

Coronavirus and Africa

 

Some days ago it was reported by John Hopkins University that there are over 27,600 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the continent. The number of deaths is 1,297.

 

Number of infected countries in alphabetical order by the report (9):

 

Algeria – 3,007 // Angola – 25 // Benin – 54 // Botswana – 22 // Burkina Faso – 616 // Burundi – 11 // Cameroon – 1,334 // Cape Verde – 82 // Central African Republic – 16 // Chad – 33 // Comoros – 0 // Congo-Brazzaville – 186 // DR Congo – 394 // Djibouti – 986 // Egypt – 3,891 // Equatorial Guinea – 84 // Eritrea – 39 // Eswatini – 31 // Ethiopia – 116 // Gabon – 167 // (The) Gambia – 10 // Ghana – 1,154 // Guinea – 862 // Guinea-Bissau – 50 // Ivory Coast – 1,004 // Kenya – 330 // Lesotho – 0 // Liberia – 101 // Libya – 60 // Madagascar – 121 // Malawi – 33 // Mali – 309 // Mauritania – 7 // Mauritius – 331 // Morocco – 3,568 // Mozambique – 46 // Namibia – 16 // Niger – 671 // Nigeria- 981 // Rwanda – 154 // Sao Tome and Principe – 4 // Senegal – 479 // Seychelles – 11 // Sierra Leone – 64 // Somalia – 328 // South Africa – 3,953 // South Sudan – 5 // Sudan – 174 // Tanzania – 284 // Togo – 88 // Tunisia – 918 // Uganda – 74 // Zambia – 76 // Zimbabwe – 29

 

However, it is very difficult to trust this information as very few people are tested due to a lack of testing kits. Take for example South Africa, the economically most developed country in Africa. Its population is 59.3 million people. The first case was discovered on March 5, 2020. By the time of April 11 (which is 37 days later) the country conducted around 60,000 tests for Covid-19 which is 1,621 tests per day. Compare this with South Korea with a population of 51 million people where there were at least 10,000 tests per day and we see how low the number of testing was in South Africa. Today, the testing  is at a rate of nearly 5,000 a day, if we believe the Health Minister Zweli Mkhize.(10)

 

Compare it to Nigeria as the most populated country in Africa with 205.1 Million people. Health authorities have tested so far only 10,000 people in Nigeria. More than 900 infections have been reported, including 40 health workers, and 28 deaths. Almost 4 times more people and only one sixth of tests compared to South Africa not to speak about South Korea. However, the first case of a person infected by Coronavirus in Sub-Saharan Africa was already discovered in late February and it was in Nigeria.(11)

 

Conditions in Nigeria

 

Like most capitalist states the Nigerian government is using the tactic of lockdown in their motion toward open dictatorships and the attack on the working class, the poor, and the lower middle class.

 

Nigeria is rich with oil whith its main source of foreign exchange earnings and government revenues. In addition to petroleum, Nigeria's other natural resources include natural gas, tin, iron ore, coal, limestone, niobium, lead, zinc, and arable land. The oil and gas sector accounts for about 10% of gross domestic product and petroleum exports revenue represents around 86% of total exports revenue.

 

The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN), through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), owns majority stakes in all of the Joint Venture. Yet its debt to the International Oil Companies (IOCs) that operates in the country was USD$6.8 billion in 2016. In December 2016, the FGN commenced negotiations with the IOCs and was subsequently able to obtain a discount of USD 1.7billion from the outstanding amount.(12)

 

The international oil companies are the well known big five: BP, Chevron, ConocoPhilips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch.

 

But it is not only the old Western imperialists who are making huge profits in Nigeria so is China. “Last August  Chinese investment in Nigeria's oil and gas industry has reached $16 billion, according to Nigeria's. Nigeria pumps 2 million barrels a day and has a goal of producing 3 million barrels a day by 2023. China's domestic oil production has been on a steady decline. So experts predict that up to 80 percent of China's crude oil supply will be imported by 2030 mostly from Nigeria.”(13)

 

According to an OXFAM report, the combined wealth of Nigeria's five richest men - $29.9 billion - could end extreme poverty at a national level, yet 5 million face hunger. More than 112 million people are living in poverty in Nigeria, yet the country's richest man would have to spend $1 million a day for 42 years to exhaust his fortune.(14)

 

79% of Women represent between 60 and 79% of Nigeria's rural labor force but are five times less likely to own their land than men. Women are also less likely to have had a decent education. Over three-quarters of the poorest women in Nigeria have never been to school and 94% of them are illiterate. Between 1960 and 2005, about $20 trillion was stolen from the treasury by public officeholders. This amount is larger than the GDP of the United States in 2012 (about $18 trillion).

 

Poverty and inequality in Nigeria are not due to a lack of  natural resources, but to the super exploitation by the imperialists combined with  ill-use, misallocation and misappropriation of such resources. At the root is a culture of corruption combined with a political elite out of touch with the daily struggles of average Nigerians.

 

In 2012, Nigeria spent just 6.5% of its national budget on education and just 3.5% on health. As a result, 57 million Nigerians lack safe water, over 130 million lack adequate sanitation, and the country has more than 10 million children out of school. In 2016, between 12.1% and 21.5% of Nigeria's youth were without a job.

 

The local elite serves not only Western and Eastern imperialists but Israel interests in Africa as well. As we said the Nigerian local elite do this for a share of the loot. A case that indicates the magnitude of this dependence on the imperialists is the relation with Israel, the tween sister of the former Apartheid regime in South Africa.

 

Israel and the Corrupted Leaders of the Nigerian Capitalist Class

 

Nigeria's first independent government was led by the Northern People's Congress in alliance with the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (a largely Igbo party), with Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as Prime Minister. In 1963, the country became a republic and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was the first President. Who was this sir Tafawa Balewa?

 

In 1955 Balewa was appointed Federal Minister of Works and Transport by Nigeria's Colonial Governor, Sir James Wilson Robertson for his loyalty to the British imperialists. The first president Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was a pro-British conservative. Nevertheless, Balewa was known for his opposition to the apartheid regime of South Africa and his government nationalized large parts of the economy and since 1962 had closer relations with Stalinist Russia. This did not endear him on Western imperialism. The army used the corruption of this government as a reason to justify military coups in 1966 and 1967, which led to civil war. For almost three decades  military rule backed by British imperialism, interrupted only briefly from 1979 to 1983 when General Olusegun Obasanjo returned the country to civilian rule, had its grip on the Nigerian people. Shortly after, the 1983 coup of General Muhammadu Buhari took place. In the civil war of 1967-1970, Israel sold weapons to both sides.

 

During the civil war "the Israeli public, press, and parliament called for assistance to Biafra, evoking their country's deep moral obligation to help a people in distress. Israel aided Biafra, including, in a clandestine manner, the supply of weapons. At the same time, Israel also sold arms to Nigeria, seeking to prevent a diplomatic rupture with the Lagos government that would have affected Israel's position in all of black Africa".(15)

 

At the urging of the Organization of African Unity, Nigeria broke formal ties with Israel in 1973 as a protest against Israel's occupation of Sinai territory belonging to Egypt. But already in January  1999, Nigeria's President Gen. Ibrahim B. Babangida, advocated the idea of restoring ties with Israel at a news conference during a three-day visit to Ghana.

 

In August 2010, the then Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan sacked the army's chief of staff, Gen. Abdulrahman Danbazau and the commanders of the air force, navy and ground forces because of corrupted military deals with Israel. The reports alleged, that some of the deals were fictitious. For instance, contracts were signed for unnecessary equipment like a simulator part - at a time when the ground forces did not even possess such a device. In another case, a fictitious deal was allegedly signed for a shipment of parachutes. Another charge was that faulty equipment, such as helicopters that were grounded because they weren't fit to fly, was purchased at an exorbitant price. The main figures whose names have been cited in the press are the former president and retired general Ibrahim Babangida.(16)

 

Israeli arms have been sold worldwide for years, supplying arms to bloody Third-World dictators. Israeli military exports totaled some $7.5 billion in 2018, according to the Defense Ministry, which supervises them. Ziv for example, founded his company Global CST in 2006, a year after retiring as head of the Israel Defense Forces' operations directorate. Until the South Sudan scandal broke, he was known for training military forces worldwide, but not for arms dealing. Countries, where he has reportedly done military training or security consulting include Togo, Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria, Georgia, Colombia, Peru, and Panama.

 

Foreign media reports say a company linked to Mitrelli (apparently a subsidiary) called HLSi is managed by a former naval commando officer. According to a report by the Nigerian investigative newspaper Premium Times, HLSi signed a $195 million contract in 2017 with the Nigerian government to supply airplanes, helicopters, patrol ships, and other items in a deal brokered by the Transportation Ministry for the navy to help fight piracy. When the deal came under fire from members of parliament, President Muhammadu Buhari was said to have canceled the agreement in May 2018. However, sources say it was never canceled.(17)

 

The Nigerian Working Class

 

During the colonialist era, before independence, the working class was the front line in the struggle against imperialist domination. The Nigerian working class has a very long history of struggles.  The Lagos general strike of 1897 was the first general strike in Sub-Saharan Africa. Among the general strikes, the most important were the 1945 general strike led by Michael Imoudu, the 1950 strike of the United Africa Company (UAC) and the Enugu Coal Mines resistance where 21 of the miners were killed and 55 other brothers were injured by the colonial police at the Iva Valley Colliery near Enugu, on 18 November 1949.

 

After independence the Nigerian working class showed itself as a very militant powerful force. This was true even under the military rule. In 1981 a general strike forced the government to agree to a raise of the minimum wage. On Mayday in 1988 an almost general strike paralyzed the economy. Lagos airport was closed. Transport workers went on strike and government officials had difficulty getting to their offices. Fearing a revolt, the army security was reinforced at government headquarters. Even though strikes were banned by the military government, the workers demanded to implement the minimum pay lay they gained in 1981 general strike. The generals wanted to borrow money from the IMF.

 

The IMF demanded to cut workers’ wages and raise the price of goods. This led to the confrontation between the working class and the military. It was fueled by the killing of students who demonstrated against the rise of prices and were brutally attacked by the military. Then the workers began their strikes on April 24.

 

The military government arrested the head of the NLC and captured the building of the union. Nevertheless the strike movement  continue to spread. Other union leaders were detained. In  July 1986, the NLC conference declared that socialism will end the military rule. However,  instead of organizing a full general strike to overthrow the military government the NLC accepted a rise of the wages and ended the strike.

 

Furthermore, the struggle of the oil union in 1994 was an example of a heroic struggle under very difficult conditions during military rule. On 4 July 1994, workers in the oil industry went on strike to protest the arrests of Abiola and the opposition coalition, the NADECO leaders. Other workers mostly in the South-West joined them. The strike disrupted domestic fuel, electricity and water supplies immediately. It closed the oil refineries and eventually the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), representing 40 unions and 3.5 million workers, called a general strike on 3 August. Yet the union bureaucracy sabotaged this struggle. Instead of an unlimited general strike to bring down the government, it was called off the next day when the government promised to release Moshood Abiola. On 18 August, the government replaced oil union and NLC leaders with appointed administrators and ordered strikers back to work. On 28 August, the military
government of Rivers State announced the arrest of saboteurs attempting to blow up oil pipelines and flow stations; 15 people were reportedly detained. Under threat of dismissal and without financial backing, the strike effectively collapsed and on 4 September it was called off. Oil union and NLC leaders have later detained.(18)

 

Since 1999 at least 13 general strikes took place in Nigeria:
“2000, June – against a proposed 50% increase in the price of petrol;
2002, January - labor leaders end a two-day general strike after they were arrested;
2003, July - eight days, the longest general strike since 1964;
2004, June - three-day general strike;
2004, October – four-day 'warning strike' over fuel price increases;
2007, June – four-day strike wins most of its demands, including stopping a 15% fuel price increase, doubling the rate of Value Added Tax (VAT) to 10% and privatizing two oil refineries and honoring a 15% pay increase for civil servants
2010, November – one-day strike to increase the minimum wage from 7,500 Naira to the current 18,000 Naira a month
2012, January – eight-day general strike over a threat to increase the fuel price by nearly 120%, resulted in a fuel price increase of less than 50%
2016, May – a three-day general strike over increasing the price of fuel after a huge surge in prices of kerosene, electricity, and food.”(19)

 

General Strikes and the future of the Revolutionary Workers Party

 

Despite a promise to conclude negotiations by the end of September, the government has made no serious move to hold discussions with the unions. In response, the ITUC-affiliated Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria launched a general strike to force the government to start negotiations. However, instead of accelerating the workers' struggle to bring down the government, the Nigerian umbrella trade union suspended the nationwide strike on its fourth day on Sunday after the government agreed to hold a meeting to discuss increasing the minimum wage to 164 Dollars a month.

 

Because of the past struggle of the working class, the minimum wage in 2011 was 18,000 Naira which was equivalent to about US$110, but now it is worth less than US$50. The general strike in 2018 led to a 67% increased of the minimum wage of 30,000 Naira (US$83)  which is in real terms it lower than the 2011 minimum wage. The general strike was called off by the union bureaucracy that presents this raise as a great victory.

 

Still, the tradition of the militant working class struggle in Nigeria is undeniable. No wonder that even before the outbreak of the Coronavirus, the government of Buhari was afraid of the working-class uprising as Nigeria's foreign debt rose from US$10.3 billion in 2015 to US$22.08 billion in 2018. The African Development Bank in its African Economic Outlook (2019) stated that about 50% of the country's revenue is now spent on external debt servicing. Concretely speaking, 2.45 trillion Naira was allocated to debt servicing in the 2020 budget out of 10.33 trillion Naira total expenditure (respectively, US$7 billion and US$28 billion).(20)

 

Even before the Coronavirus  began to spread in Nigeria, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)  downgraded its earlier growth projection for Nigeria in 2020 from 2.5 percent to 2 percent.

 

As our comrades in Nigeria wrote: “The general confidence level amongst Nigerians for the ruling elite and the  Buhari government is seriously waning, thus we can expect more revolts from various quarters of the citizenry. Today's presidential speech has indicated a two-week extension of the lockdowns. One can only expect such developments to deepen with time.”(21)

 

Clearly what is missing is an independent workers' party to to lead the fight for a workers' government and for the expropriation of the big capital under workers' control.

 

When the next wave of struggle against the government that serve the imperialists and the local elite breaks out, to rally for the formation of such a independent workers' party will be a central  task for the revolutionaries in Nigeria. While struggles for higher wages and full employment are important they should not end there. If humanity is to survive, capitalism must be overthrown and the bourgeois’ state must be replaced by workers states.

 

Our brothers and sisters in Nigeria and the African continent as such have experienced centuries of slavery and colonialism, brutal military rule and imperialism, epidemics like Ebola, HIV/AIDS and even diseases like Cholera, which are eradicated in the rich countries of Europe and the United States. Never have our brothers and sisters in the continent of Africa surrendered and they will not do this now because of COVID-19 and forced lockdowns.

 

Instead this are the militants and leaders of the first ranks in the future World Party of Socialism!

 

*****

 

We recommend to readers of this article to have a look at the subpages of the RCIT on the continent of Africa and on the COVID-19 crisis:

Africa and Middle East: https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/
Collection of Articles on the 2019 Corona Virus: https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/collection-of-articles-on-the-2019-coronavirus/
Furthermore, we strongly recommend to visit the website of  the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard (Sympathizing Section of the RCIT in Nigeria):   https://revolutionarysocialistvanguard.wordpress.com/

 

 

Footnotes:

 

(1) “Coronavirus lockdown 'unnecessary'? Some Israeli researchers think so 'To say we want to
minimize the number of infected people is ridiculous.'”, By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, The Jerusalem
Post, April 29, 2020, https://www.jpost.com/health-science/coronavirus-lockdown-unnecessary
some-israeli-researchers-think-so-626300

 

(2)   “Edict of the Aediles”, Digest 21.1.31.21, trans. Alan Watson

 

(3) “Roman Slavery and the Question of Race”, By Sandra Joshel, BlackPast.org, January 4, 2020, https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/perspectives-global-african-history/romanslavery-and-question-race/

 

(4)  Ibid

 

(5) “African chiefs urged to apologise for slave trade. Nigerian civil rights group says tribal leaders'
ancestors sold people to slavers and should say sorry like US and Britain”, By David Smith, The
Guardian, November 18, 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/18/africans
apologise-slave-trade

 

(6)  “Stages of Colonialism in Africa: From Occupation of Land to Occupation of Being”, By
Hussein A. Bulhan, in: Journal of  Social and Political Psychology Vol 3, No 1 (2015)

 

(7) “African governments’ debt payments double in just two years”, Jubilee Debt Campaign, October 8, 2018, https://jubileedebt.org.uk/press-release/african-governments-debt-paymentsdouble-in-just-two-years

 

(8) "The fate of the World Bank during a divided US government", By Christopher Kilby, BROOKINGS, 7 November 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/futuredevelopment/2018/11/07/the-fate-of-the-world-bank-during-a-divided-us-government/

 

(9) “Coronavirus in Africa”, By Abdur Rahman Alfa Shaban, Updated 24/04/2020, Africa News, https://www.africanews.com/2020/04/24/coronavirus-in-africa-breakdown-of-infectedvirus-free-countries/

 

(10) “How the spread of coronavirus is testing Africa”, By Mike Onyiego BBC News, April 11, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52230991

 

(11)  “Coronavirus: Nigeria confirms first case in sub-Saharan Africa”, BBC News, February 28,
2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51671834

 

(12) “Nigerian Oil and Gas Update”, By Chibuzor Anyanechi, KPMG, October 21, 2019, https://home.kpmg/ng/en/home/insights/2019/10/nigerian-oil-and-gas-update.html

 

(13)  “China Invests $16 Billion in Nigeria's Oil Sector”, By Chika Oduah, VOA News, August
28, 2019, https://www.voanews.com/africa/china-invests-16-billion-nigerias-oil-sector

 

(14)  “Nigeria: extreme inequality in numbers”, OXFAM International,
https://www.oxfam.org/en/nigeria-extreme-inequality-numbers

 

(15)  “Israel, Nigeria and the Biafra civil war”, By Zach Levey, in: 1967–70 Journal of Genocide Research, Volume 16, 2014 - Issue 2-3

 

(16)  “Inside Intel / Meanwhile, Back in Nigeria...The country's president has fired four top army officers over alleged problems with weapons purchases. Once again, an Israeli arms dealer is reportedly involved”, By Yossi Melman, Haaretz, September 16, 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/1.5113907

 

(17)  “Inside the Shadowy World of Israeli Arms Dealers  Some say the business isn’t really all that profitable, except when you score that one very big deal”, By Shuki Sadeh, Haaretz, January 11, 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-inside-the-shadowy-world-of-israeli-armsdealers-1.8379032

 

(18)  “Nigeria: Trade unionists in Nigeria: a state of crisis”, Amnesty International, Index number: ACT 73/007/1995,  April 30, 1995, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ACT73/007/1995/en/

 

(19) “Mass strikes in Nigeria: Is austerity taking its toll?”, By Andy Wynne, Pambazuka News, January 27, 2017, https://www.pambazuka.org/democracy-governance/mass-str

 

(20)  “National Debt and Economic Crisis in Nigeria”, By Lai Brown, Review of African Political Economy, January 23, 2020, http://roape.net/2020/01/23/national-debt-and-economic-crisis-innigeria/

 

(21)  “COVID-19 Crisis in Nigeria: State Repression and the Left”,  Report by the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard (RSV), Nigeria [Sympathizing Section of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT)], 13th April 2020. http://www.revolutionarysocialistvanguard.WordPress.com