By Rotimi Fasan
FOR the Libyan leader Muammar Ghaddafi pride went before a fall. When in the middle of February Egyptian youths decided to send their long time leader, Hosni Mubarak, packing Ghaddafi, it was, came out to say he felt sorry for Mubarak.

He spoke in the tone of a man assured that what might seemed to him as a display of youthful impertinence could never happen in Libya. It was not surprising that Ghaddafi should speak in such tones. He had held power for too long that he couldn’t possibly imagine what it could mean to live without it.

It was a matter of course, for him, that he should continue to be the leader of Libya despite the writing on the wall by way of the wave of protests that was sweeping across the Arab world. Ghaddafi, in short, spoke like a man assured that he could lead Libya forever. He had so quickly forgotten that only days before, then, Mubarak had himself made a last ditch attempt to sound tough, warning Egyptian protesters that he would not leave.

But leave he did within hours of making that statement. As for Ghaddafi, we can’t yet be certain how things would pan out, but it all looks like a matter of time before his house of cards that he had so diligently nurtured falls. Already his former lieutenants have been shipping out as if from a sinking ship, the world can only wait for some time before Ghaddafi finally bites the dust.

The reader might already know where my sympathy lies in the unfolding saga of people power initiative in Libya, if not across the Arab world. Generally, I believe nobody, no matter how benevolent or altruistic, has the right to lord it over a people the way many of Africa’s long-serving leaders and others in the Arab world have held forth for so long.

Nobody could hold what should ordinarily be an elective position for so long without becoming corrupt which many of these leaders, including Ghaddafi, have been proven to be. Since he took over the saddle of governance in Libya in 1969, thus making him Africa’s longest-serving leader, Ghaddafi had created for himself this image of a selfless and beloved leader of his people which he most likely was then.

But the spoils of position would, down the years and decades, prove destructive to whatever idealism he espoused after taking over. The vast oil reserve of Libya, the largest in Africa, ensured Ghaddafi kept his corrupt ways and those of his children from the eyes of the world. He advocated African unity and stood as a staunch opponent of Western, especially American, imperialism.

It was nice to see Ghaddafi stand up to big America the way many of Nigeria’s fumbling and very corrupt leaders could not. Ghaddafi like Fidel Castro showed that size was immaterial where a people have a determined, focussed leader.

That way he came to have a larger-than-life image, the same way Ghana, Nigeria’s small neighbour, has come to look very big relative to the so-called giant of Africa.

Ghaddafi supported causes that favoured Africa’s liberation from Western control. But what has for long weaned me of Ghaddafi’s charisma was his tendency to look down on African countries south of the Sahara, to wit, Black Africa. There was something of racist arrogance in Ghaddafi’s behaviour to say nothing of his brash ways of imposing on many of the countries down the Desert. Soon he would start promoting and funding insurrection in some of these places such as Chad.

And the manner he had dealt with Nigerians trying to use Libya as escape point to Europe bordered on racism. It is his effort in this area that he’s been flaunting to inspire support for his sinking ship from Western countries in the wake of the unprecedented opposition to his rule in Libya. And it is to mercenaries from Black Africa and Europe that he has, allegedly, turned in his most brutal suppression of the uprising in his country.

Which, in addition to his attempts at bribing the Libyan people with money, shows him to be power-hungry.
Of course he and Saif Al Islam, his equally megalomaniac son, have vowed to die fighting than leave Libya. But his use of very extreme measures, some of war crime status, that have earned him sanctions from the UN and other Western nations is what has kept him in place this far.

Yet it’s a matter of time, if not now then later: Ghaddafi must go having lost the legitimacy to rule. It cannot be denied that a permanent dent has been made on his apparent invincibility with places like Benghazi and other parts of Eastern Libya falling into the hands of opposition forces. Libya is now clearly a divided country, something Ghaddafi had managed to keep under for too long.

His attempt to maintain a dynasty is unravelling and with the freezing of assets running into billions of US dollars belonging to him, his family and cronies, he is in for hard times. The lavish palaces and businesses he owns by proxy through his children across the West shows him up to be hardly different from those other African leaders we’ve always known to be corrupt.
It shows a lack of faith in his country and people that he or any connected to him would own such assets in
the same Western countries that he had always railed against. Now is the time that Ghaddafi wants the West to see him as an ally. He blames his woes on Osama Bin Laden whose brand of Islam he appeared to support.

He talks of the youths being under the influence of drugs and what-not, but conveniently forgets his complicity in breeding that army of mostly disempowered youth he now bribes with a few hundred dollars to keep off the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi where his war planes hadn’t completed the job of violent suppression.

No, Ghaddafi should realise that his days of atrocities are numbered and he must leave. But like all bullies, he’s been resisting. Sooner than later the scales would fall from his racist and deceived eyes. The likes of Yoweri Museveni who irresponsibly went on the BBC to boast that nothing like what is happening across the Arab world could happen in Uganda because he would simply round the protesters up- his likes should know that they are behind time and would go soon like all power hostages.

In that same Uganda there once was Idi Amin, Milton Obote and other despots. Yoweri has nothing new to offer by way of bestiality. Like others before him and now Ghaddafi, he would suffer the fate of the defeated.