Last Friday, Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram carried out a wave of bombings and gun battles which have killed at least 162 people.

The attacks, in the commercial city of Kano, are the Islamist group’s deadliest yet, in a series of more than 30 bombings claimed by the group since 2009.

Friday’s events come in the wake of the victorious strikes and protests against a hike in oil prices, after the government cut state subsidies.

The Save Nigeria Group (SNG), which co-ordinated many of the protests called off the planned victory rally in the wake of the explosions.

The strike wave was so strong that it threatened to bring the country’s oil sector to a standstill. The people won a partial victory as the cost was reduced from N141 to N97 per litre, although it had been only N65 before the subsidies were removed.

The recent week-long nationwide protests in which millions of Nigerians rose up in revolt, saw ten people die and hundreds injured. The army was called out onto the streets and a general strike paralysed the economy. Many protesters were concerned that savings made by removing the subsidies wouldn’t be put back into infrastructure as promised.

Boko Hama is seeking to undermine the success of working-class mobilisation by exploiting religious tensions between the country’s Muslim and Christian population. The attacks on Friday are an effort to intimidate those who have championed the need for a united resistance based on collective action, rather than sectarian divides.

We condemn the bombing and call on the millions involved in the recent mobilisations to carry on reinforcing the links forged between different communities involved in a shared struggle.

Equally we condemn the corrupt Nigerian government whose sole concern is guaranteeing the flow of oil through Shell pipelines, with the proceeds flooding into the swiss bank accounts of government officials.

Although the immediate cause of the strikes and protests was fuel prices, protesters said the underlying anger was more about years of frustration at corruption and mismanagement of the country’s huge oil wealth.

The government’s partial retreat shows that collective action gets the goods, but this struggle is far from won. Although Nigeria is one of Africa’s most rich oil countries the ruling class collaborates with Western energy companies to ensure that the country’s vast oil wealth lines the pockets of those living far from the polluted, militia-ridden river deltas. As a result, Nigerians have suffered decades of violence and decreasing living standards.

Central to Nigeria’s problems is the part played by religious extremists on both sides. As we see the working class movement engage in a struggle that transcends the abstract divisions of religious scripture, Boko Haram resort to terrorising ordinary people. That others will imitate and retaliate is certain.

While Nigeria’s protest wave hit headlines in the west, similar protests can be seen across the semi-colonial world. Declining profit rates in the imperialist heartlands, forces companies to drive down labour costs, take risks and cut corners – and the biggest payoffs for this are in the countries least able to resist these measures.

Nigerians have shown that resistance is possible, while their trade union leaders have shown that bureaucracies fear the independent initiative of rank-and-file workers, and will attempt to limit it there, just as our own domestic bureaucrats are doing here.

We stand in solidarity with Nigerians rising up against corruption and poverty. We oppose any role for terrorists who attack the working class movement. Such actions will only strengthen the government, who will attempt to use the bombings as a pretext to restore order – disbanding local action committees, strengthening police powers, imposing curfews and all the other methods of repression available to the determined capitalist state.

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