By Rotimi Fasan
It’s all ending not with the promised bang but a whimper. After 42 years of what started as a patriotic attempt to return power to the people of Libya from the ruling monarchy of King Mohammed Idris, Muhammar Gaddafi, the one who bore the rank of a colonel but exercised powers beyond those of a Field Marshall was chased away with a $1.4 million price placed on his head- dead or alive. For Gaddafi, it was a case of pride before a fall.

Back in February, in the heat of the Arab Spring, he had in his usual boastful way said that the uprising building up against Mubarak and other Arab leaders could never happen in Libya.

He was so positive the Libyan people were too firmly under the spell of his more than four decades of absolute rule to contemplate such treasonable thought as would make them seek a different experience under a different dispensation. Little did he realise he was on the last stretch of the road that would lead him out of power. But in just six months of sustained assault on his authority with the active backing of NATO firepower, the myth that Gaddafi and family had built around themselves finally unravelled.

Images of rebel soldiers walking the grounds of his fortified compound in the heart of Tripoli, until then a forbidden territory to all unwanted persons, by which I mean persons not connected to the regime by blood or association, which in practical terms means the majority of the Libyan people- after six months of determined push, people power has at last prevailed in Libya. The pockets of resistance being put up by some of his supporters needed but a clean-up and Libyan streets would be cleared of the debris of Gaddafi’s rule.

A leader who had in the past made genuine effort at meeting the aspirations of his people as well as the hopes of Africans and Arabs in oppressed regions of the continent and beyond, Gaddafi would over the years gradually alienate his people and others who had supported him by his arrogant and increasingly erratic behaviour. His perverted desire to fish always in troubled waters didn’t help matters. He gradually became deaf to the yearnings of his people even as his powers got more absolute.

He harboured continental hope of a united African government that he didn’t mind would come under his control if all other African leaders would but agree. The assertive positions he took in his relations with the West got less and less convincing precisely because of his racially-motivated interference in parts of Africa. He was prepared to march on and sponsor insurrection in Chad among other parts of the continent.

Even our country was not spared of his acerbic tongue. He didn’t mind seeing Nigeria which he considered a big-for-nothing country break up for reasons best known to him. Well, no thanks to the very irresponsible, corrupt and spineless leaders the polity routinely throws up, Gaddafi could afford to talk down at us with no consequences.

He visited our country as if with an invading army of women soldiers, insisting on full control of security arrangement right here on our doorstep.

At a time Nigerians were groaning under the despotic rule of Sani Abacha and the soldier of fortune enjoyed nothing but the pariah treatment that was his deserving, Gaddafi proved to be a friend indeed to him. He said nothing about the unjust and clearly invidious treatment of Nigerians by a leader who wanted national support. It was sufficient for Gaddafi that he had yet another African in his unenviable company. He was happy Abacha was doing enough to incur the ire of the West even if he added no value to the lives of his people.

Gaddafi didn’t mind expressing his very strong views in very disagreeable ways, and not always for very good reasons. Many times he spoke for no other reason but the sheer nuisance value of his views. His nemesis like that of many African and Arab leaders before him was his self-inflicted malady of staying too long in power. He thought he was destined to be the Libyan Leader.

For a man whose purportedly republican, if not democratic, pretensions led him to stage a coup against an existing monarchy- for such a leader to proceed to institute what in practical terms was yet another monarchy in disguise, with his children carefully positioned to continue after him- for such a leader not to have realised the game was up after the bubble began to burst in mid-February amounts to a serious form of hubris. Gaddafi and his family had come to harbour a strong sense of entitlement to the Libyan leadership position, which was why they did not see the point in negotiating their way out of power when the opportunity was there.

They spurned any such suggestion and like Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi’s predecessor in arrogant use of power, they promised a bloodbath should anyone or group seek to remove them from power. A bloodbath there has, indeed, been but only to the extent that Gaddafi chose to be intransigent, sacrificing his own people for his selfish ambition. But as the rebels advanced into Tripoli and closed in on his stronghold then did it dawn on the regime to call for negotiation.

At this point, however, the period of grace had been long over. Victory was within the grasp of the rebels and only a born slave would seek to trade that away for a misbegotten negotiation. Rightly they spat on the Gaddafi offer. Within hours they had run Tripoli aground. True, they exaggerated their claims of arrest of Gaddafi’s sons, Saif Al Islam and Saadi who came out of hiding but to prove the reports of arrest wrong. But that could only delay not stop the hand of the clock. As I write this, the rebels who we must now learn to call the government while Gaddafi and his hordes become the rebels under the new regime- the rebels (I call them this for the very last time!) have but a few clean-ups to do.

Gaddafi himself is nowhere to be found. Wherever else he may be, he must ensure he is caught nowhere away from the battle ground. Otherwise, he would have failed to live up to the oaths of chivalry befitting a warlord. Should he choose not to be the hero he promised would die in the field of battle, he would only be treading the ground already beaten by –yes again- Saddam. For after his promised ‘mother of all battles’ that began in 1991 but ended with his ouster in 2003, he went into hiding and ensured he was not killed in battle. So much for a warmonger.