The 1964 General Strike

Abstract

As regional and ethnic competition intensified during the census crisis, tension of a wholly different order was gathering explosive force. Wage labourers were beginning to focus their indignation over declining real income and gross economic inequality into militant demands for government attention and higher pay. For a brief but crucial year in Nigerian politics, the severely fractured trade-union movement united in a concerted challenge to the political class. What began as a protest over wages quickly widened into an attack on the very basis of the regime’s authority. Spanning the latter stages of the census crisis and the preliminary manoeuvring of the Federal Election, the conflict peaked in a thirteen-day General Strike that brought the economic life of the nation to a virtual standstill. In the confrontation, Nigerian workers scored a significant victory, while the regime was discredited across a wide and crucial segment of public opinion.

‘In the present circumstances, my government will be failing in its duty to the nation if it does not take all necessary steps in its power to avoid a dislocation of the economic life of this country … The present situation cannot be tolerated any longer.’ — Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, in a national broadcast, 9 June 1964 (Melson, 1970: 785)

‘The dismissal notices you have received are so many scraps of paper. You can keep them as souvenirs to show your children and remind them that today is a turning point in the history of this country.’-Wahab Goodluck, Co-Chairman, Joint Action Committee, and President, Nigerian Trade Union Congress, to a strike rally, 10 June 1964 (West Africa, 13 June 1964: 657)