Nigeria Content Online

Africa is perhaps
the world’s most unfortunate continent because its leadership cadre is
populated by rapacious and wicked set of people who prefer to steal
their countries blind and hide the fortunes in remote banking halls of
the world. In these banks the money does not become useful to them nor
to their countries because when they die their countries go through
lots of pain and fail to get back the stolen funds with which they have
enriched the economy of the West.

Remember Mobutu
Sese Seko and back home in Nigeria Sani Abacha. The two surely are not
on the Foreign Policy magazine because they are since dead.

Hosni Mubarak who
has held Egypt under his strong thumb since he succeeded the late Anwar
Sadat has after 29 years entered his name in the hall of infamy and a
sit tight leader even in the Arab world where holding of elections may
not be a strong point. The editors of Foreign Policy describe him as “A
senile and paranoid autocrat whose sole preoccupation is
self-perpetuation in office.” He has made Egypt to become a country
where citizens have increasingly become disillusioned and fed up with
going to the polls when they know their thumbprints count for nothing.
He is openly working to turn the country into a dynasty by having his
son succeed him.

After three decades
of holding forte in Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo
(what a mouthful of names) has become the state. There is actually no
visible line that separates the Mbasogo family from the state. Although
the country’s oil wealth is huge enough to make it stand shoulder to
shoulder with many countries in Europe, Mbasogo’s iron rule has ensured
that this does not happen.

Chad, this
eternally poor and impoverished country has been so unlucky that it
goes from one crisis to another. Idriss Deby its leader who was himself
once a rebel leader has turned into a full blown dictator whose words,
right or wrong, is law. He has cowed all his opponents so much that
those who cannot work for him have left the poor country and its
purblind leader. Deby after two decades in power,has become so afraid
of everything around him that he is said to be building a moat round
the capital. To protect himself from the people he is ruling?

“An eccentric
egoist infamous for his indecipherably flamboyant speeches and equally
erratic politics,” that is how the editors describe Muammar Al-Quaddafi
the Libyan leader. The Libyan leader who has held power for forty one
years has of recent mellowed down perhaps because of old age, but his
hold on power in his country has not been relaxed. Although a few who
are his admirers hold the view that he has at least done a few positive
things for his country. For instance, no one has ever accused him of
storing fabulous wealth in any of the banks of the West. He has at
least shown some level of sense of decency in this area where most of
his colleagues have failed woefully.

Melezi Zenawi of
Ethiopia has shown that he could be as barbarous and rough as Mengistu
Haille Mariam whom he fought valiantly to overthrow some twenty years
ago. Perhaps today most Ethiopians would have been wondering why they
hated Mengistu so much when Zenawi has turned out to be the same or
even worse after nineteen years in the saddle. His neighbour Isaias
Afwerki is no better.

Described as a
“crocodile liberator” by the editors he has turned his country into a
huge camp where media are in total shackles and citizens are subjected
to long military service to continue to fight for his sustenance in
power! Of course the one that can’t escape the list is Omar Hassan
al-Bashir of Sudan who is surely going to get his own ‘Charles Taylor’
treatment no matter how long it takes the world to get him. He has
continued to travel in countries that are friendly to him and he is
perhaps sure will not hand him over to the International Criminal Court
which has charged him for genocide and war crimes.

As of the time of
writing this piece he is on a visit to his soul mate Deby in Chad. He
is spending his twenty first year in power.

Finally, there is the emperor of Zimbabwe and the grand liberator,
Robert Mugabe. A man who, perhaps, would have today stood second in
world fame only to Nelson Mandela if he had chosen the path of honour,
has stashed the country’s fortunes abroad and sent his children to Asia
to live like lords in the universities there. After leading the country
to independence thirty years ago he has dragged it from its Olympian
heights to the lowest depth a country can sink to. Inflation now run at
an unprecedented billion percent! These men and those from last week’s
list are the ‘final men’ because they have come to regard themselves as
the state. Without them the state cannot survive. This has come to pass
in a country like Somalia where it has gone to the dogs since the death
of Siad Barre. Are these men not responsible for their countries woes?