Muammar Gaddafi is
a newsmaker any day and anywhere he goes. He is not like other leaders
who do not give journalists interesting quotes. I am yet to get over
the surprise that his tenure as chairperson of the African Union, a
post he had very much desired, lasted without any much drama. The only
controversy during the time was his attempt to elongate his tenure as
the AU’s head, perhaps viewing the organisation as an extension of his
Libya where he has held power since 1969. African leaders, knowing this
would send a wrong signal across the world, rejected his plan.

Now, he has jumped
into a new controversy. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) last
week quoted Mr. Gaddafi as offering what he thought, in his fertile
imagination, was the best solution to the crises of relationship which
seem to have embroiled Nigeria in the last few years.

According to the
report which the BBC credited to the Libyan news agency, the maverick
leader of Libya said the best way to solve this problem was to severe
Nigeria into two and let the Muslims go their way and the Christians to
their tents. To back his argument, he, reportedly, pointed to what was
done to India and Pakistan shortly before independence by allowing the
Muslim dominated Pakistan to go its way and the Hindu dominated India
the other way.

But has the
separation solved the problem between the two countries? Are Pakistani
Muslims and Indian Hindus not fighting between themselves? If religion
is the basis on which people would no longer fight one another, why are
the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq always engaged in internecine
wars? Is Libya, which boasts of being an Islamic country, free of
strife among its Muslims?

The Libyan leader
has by this simplistic and out rightly stupid outburst shown that he is
not the kind of leader that the continent should look forward to. As
the Yoruba people say, cutting off the head is not the cure for a
nagging headache! No sensible person would think that the solution to
the senseless killing going on in northern Nigeria is to apply the
Gaddafi recipe. I am not by any stretch of imagination a supporter of
getting people divided along religious or tribal lines. It is bad
enough that Africa’s colonial masters divided the continent along
tribal and ethnic lines why then should the Gaddafis of this world want
to further polarise it along religious cleavages?

Tribal and ethnic
wars are usually easy to overcome. Religious divisions are the worst
kinds of differences and should not be allowed to fester. What is
happening in Nigeria has not gone too bad as to desire or require the
dangerous recipe that Gaddafi has proposed. He should leave Nigeria
alone and concentrate on his selfish expansionist ambition in his
spheres of the Arab world.

The condemnation of
his recipe by Nigeria’s Senate President, David Mark, who dismissed him
saying he is ’mad’’, might be harsh on a leader of another country but
what do you call a man who does not weigh his words before throwing
them around?

The African continent is unlucky to be inflicted with men who spew
nonsense and behave irrationally. Finally, however, no matter how much
condemnation we heap of Gaddafi, we must tell Nigerian leaders to wake
up to their duties to the traumatised populace and save us from being
killed by some marauding bandits who hide under the guise of religion
to shed innocent blood.