Nigeria Content Online

It’s probable that
when Barack Obama first announced his intention to run for President of
the United States of America, many people must have said: “He’s crazy”,
or “he must be mad!” And perhaps you do have to be a bit crazy to stand
up and ask people to vote for you. Or brave, if one considers that
bravery is an aspect of craziness.

But as George
Bernard Shaw observed, since the reasonable man tries to adapt to the
world as it is, progress depends on unreasonable men who try to change
the world.

So if we’ve been
seeing a bit of craziness on the Arab street recently, we need to
remember how crazy you need to be to risk imprisonment, torture, injury
and death to even think of joining protests whose goal is to change an
oppressive status quo.

But in Libya, the
mad bravery of the people is being matched by the murderous craziness
of the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution, Muammar Gaddafi.
Or how else can we describe the collective madness of the family at the
top that threatened its own citizens with civil war?

The decision to
use ‘African’ mercenaries to mow down Libyans in their own country had
of course, a measure of ruthless calculation. Just as Gaddafi is said
to have surrounded himself with female bodyguards because he hoped that
any would-be assassin might hesitate to shoot a woman in order to get
at him, he also apparently knew that many of his security forces might
hesitate to butcher their fellow-citizens.

If that was cold calculation however, the use of fighter jets to bomb his own capital reeks of mad desperation.

Perhaps at the
beginning, Gaddafi’s crazy idea that he could become Libya’s head of
state was as inspiring and infectious as Obama’s. But the sad reality
is that power tends to corrupt. That applies even to a US President
governing with a hostile Congress. As ex-president, Bill Clinton said,
explaining the fundamental reason why he indulged himself in the
Lewinsky affair: I did it because I could. The American system though
(like ours), limits the powers of its commanders-in-chief, not just
that pesky Congress and the courts: if even those fail (as they were in
danger of doing in the heat of the post-9/11 era under President George
W. Bush) there is also a term limit. These all combine to arrest the
tendency of power to corrupt.

Libya however illustrates the effect of power that lacks any of those checks.

The world has been
rightly horrified at the excesses of the Libyan dictator and his sons
(who only seem reasonable in comparison to the ghastly brood of Saddam
Hussein of Iraq and if one forgets Hannibal Gaddafi, arrested in
Switzerland for beating up his domestic staff).

It is noticeable
that the African Union, despite the African Charter on Human and
Peoples Rights, has been rather slow to condemn Gaddafi’s breaches of
that treaty. After all, even the Arab League found its voice to condemn
him, and even mild-mannered Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the
United Nations didn’t wait for the Security Council’s go-ahead before
denouncing the violence being used against protesters. What is more it
is in Africa that Gaddafi has fomented most trouble, especially since
he made peace with the West over Lockerbie and abandoned the pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction.

(The least said
about Nigeria’s silence the better. We must be grateful that President
Goodluck Jonathan is at least talking about rescuing Nigerians stranded
in Libya, although obviously the nine or so presidential jets can’t be
spared from essential election campaign duty and anyway, would hardly
dent the huge numbers involved.) Still, considering that there are
fewer sit-tight elongated-tenure rulers on the continent than those who
came to power after 2000, it’s difficult to understand the AU’s
reticence. Maybe the habit of subservience to the
mischief-maker-in-chief is too ingrained. Or perhaps it’s all those oil
dollars that he didn’t spend improving life for his own people. The
US$18,000 per day reportedly paid to those ‘African’ mercenaries is
only the latest in a stream of filthy lucre flowing from the Brotherly
Guide’s pockets, and even some democratically elected leaders (as well
as some unsuccessful candidates) will be uneasily hoping that records
of Gaddafi’s campaign contributions will not be exposed by any new
reformist administration in Libya.

Which must surely
come: the writing is on the wall for the Libyan dictator. With Gaddafi
having lost control of half the country at the time of writing, one is
irresistibly reminded of the interpretation of PERES in the original
writing on the wall (MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN): Thy kingdom is
divided … But the more unreasonable behaviour we see from Gaddafi and
his sons: the threatening incoherence of Saif, while from the father we
have had the loopy umbrella appearance, the ranting ‘I will die a
martyr’ speech, and the ‘demonstrators are smoking something’ (!)
allegation, it is also relevant to remind ourselves that TEKEL meant
“You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.” Or – in
keeping with the desert Arab zeitgeist – a palm tree short of an oasis:
Not quite all there.