Invest in caring, not killing

The details of the massacre of more than 500 defenseless poor and exploited persons - mostly women and children - in Nigeria came on March, 8, International Women's Day.

International women's day is the one day when the world stands with the self-affirmation of women. In all parts of the world, women have been organising against their oppression and subordination, and this day of respect and honor was despoiled by the news of the callous and brutal killings.

Yet, these killings and violence in Nigeria were only a reminder of the killings, murder, rape, violation and massive oppression that women face every day. This is why one group of women used the occasion of the International Women's Day to call for a global strike. Our sisters from the Red Thread Movement have been at the forefront of the call to end militarism and to invest in caring and not killing.

We, the people of the world, demand that:

• The ‘war with no end' and the arms trade and genocide it imposes, be brought to an end.
• The over $900 billion now spent on military budgets worldwide be invested instead in the care and welfare of all the people and our planet.
• All caring work, now done mainly by women, be valued and paid for, and a pension paid to all those whose decades of work have never been recognised.
• Caring, and therefore the survival and enrichment of every life and of the planet, becomes the aim of every society and every economy.

Today, the challenge of how to confront the male problem in Africa has been compounded by fundamentalists of all stripes who seek to hide behind religion to promote their insecurity. It is this insecurity that has been on display in Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, Algeria, and in every part of the planet where males fear the emergence of the rights of all, especially grassroots women.

News reports of the killings continue to use language that inflame, ranting about ethnic and religious clashes in Nigeria. In the media, officials cower by stating that the killings in Jos were revenge killings.

From the images, it is clear that a certain blindness has overtaken the ruling classes of Nigeria so that they can continue looting and plundering the country. Revenge begets revenge, so that the justification of the killings as being in revenge for the January massacres will only continue this recursion of butchery if there is no break in the culture of impunity for the organisers of this violence.

How could a country with an intelligence and security service stand by while the plotters enact their massacres? These killings represent a serious indictment on the political class in Nigeria. For the past fifty years, the Nigerian ruling elements who revel in the relationship with Europe have been making a mockery of independence.

These elements have been the beneficiaries of the divisions of the working peoples and they facilitate and enable the fundamentalists from all religious hues. From their rituals of subordination to the imperial cultures, these elements have stoked the fires of war, oppression, division, and hate while salting away billions in their bank accounts in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

The Ogas have exhausted their potential to contribute to the transformation of Nigeria and Africa. The self-righteous purveyors of imperial rituals seek recourse to the divide and rule tactics of their mentors to halt the freedom of Nigeria. These elements who send their children to boarding schools to be educated in the best Oxbridge accents are behind the manipulation of religion and regionalism. They despise African thinking, African Knowledge systems, and more importantly African life .The deaths in Jos are just another statistic.

The evidence of the role of ruling class women has been well documented by Ifi Amadiume in her insights into Daughters of the Goddess, Daughters of Imperialism. Amadiume was drawing a line between those who invested in caring and those who invested in killing and manipulation. The oppressed Nigerian women who bear the brunt of the alliance between the Daughters of Imperialism and the ‘chop and quench' elements, must organise across the country in solidarity against all forms of butchering and slaughtering. This includes opposition to the incitement to slaughter.

A few years ago, we saw another possibility of the grassroots energy when women went on strike against the oil despoilers in the Niger Delta. Today on international women's day we mourn those who were massacred but we believe that the grassroots women of Nigeria will move again and when they move, they will amaze not only Nigeria but also the world.

Dr. Campbell is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University in New York.