When a man of Gaddafi’s might falls, it is typical of self-taught historians and unpaid political commentators to creep out of the woodwork voicing their opinions based on what they hear through Western media outlets influenced by governments who seek to provide a defense for their interventionist actions in countries around the world.
When a man of Gaddafi’s might falls, it is typical of self-taught historians and unpaid political commentators to creep out of the woodwork voicing their opinions based on what they hear through Western media outlets influenced by governments who seek to provide a defense for their interventionist actions in countries around the world.
When Western commentators choose to speak against a man such as Gaddafi, they could be forgiven because to a certain extent they come from countries with functional policies in place and a couple of these countries are better than Libya. What however baffles me is when the Nigerian media, public and political elite who live in a country worse off than Libya spend so much effort speaking against a man who did much more for his country than the thieves in this sector of the hemisphere will ever do for theirs.
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If wishes were horses, I would swap Nigeria’s rulers for the last 51 years and hand Nigerians Gaddafi for 42 years, I think we would do considerably better than this visionless progression to nowhere led by the current coterie of brigands we’ve found ourselves with.
Under this bad man called Gaddafi, Libyans had the highest standard of living in Africa. In 2010, the United Nations Development Programme rated Libya as having the highest ranking in its Human Development Index for Africa. In terms of the world, the UNDP HDI statistics considered Libya better than countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil and Turkey.
Nigeria? This nation of Agbada-wearing blind mice masquerading as politicians was rated one of the worst developed nations in the world in terms of the Human Development Indices for both Africa and the world. Countries such as Ghana, Cameroon, Benin Republic, Togo and even poverty-stricken Bangladesh were ranked as better than Nigeria. Even worse, São Tomé and Príncipe that Nigeria donates money to, was said to have a better standard of living than we do.
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Gaddafi’s Libya had free health care, interest free loans from banks, free education and subsidized housing. Libyan’s schooling abroad had access to not only finance for their studies but recognition for engaging in scholarly activities. While our university system progressively loses value like termite-infested wood and our graduates can’t even write essays much less books, Libya had a literacy rate of around 90% with women receiving an almost equivalent exposure to education as men. Of course, our rating is somewhere far behind them, even Tanzania and Gabon are doing much better than we are.
Libya’s social welfare programme under Gaddafi cannot be replicated in Nigeria after 51-years of independence, yet here we are talking about Libya and Gaddafi like the nation of hypocrites we are, paupers discussing the price of expensive lace. Petrol in Libya in March this year was the equivalent of 19 Naira per litre, subsidized by Gaddafi’s government without complaint, while in Nigeria successive thieving governments have attempted to yoke the masses into perpetual slavery by increasing the cost of petrol each year, now they are threatening to cut out subsidy and leave us with fuel at 142 Naira per litre next year.
Nigerian refineries catering to 180 million people have a combined installed capacity of less than 460,000 barrels of crude oil per day, yet we’re lucky if we get 75% of this production capacity.
Under Gadaffi, Libya’s production capacity in its refineries was for 378,000 barrels. Their population is 6.4 million people. They only use about 220,000 barrels per day for domestic uses and export the rest.
Of course let’s think of what Gaddafi did for his people in terms of electricity, a Nigerian all-time favourite and comparison metric. Libya under Gaddafi had total installed electric generation capacity of 6,248MW for their 6.4 million people. Nigeria through an organization run by old pensioners growing fat on government salaries claims to have 4,000MW installed but we only see about 3,000MW of this capacity performing for 180 million people.
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et today I’ve read more than ten articles written by Nigerians, who write as if Gadaffi personally blew pepper in their eyes. How many Libyan refugees are in Nigeria, how many Nigerians were on forced economic exile were in Libya? What did our own politicians do when the NATO-supported NTC lined up Nigerians and shot them in cold blood in the streets?
Nigerians should kindly find something better to discuss other than Libya and Gaddafi, our case has gone beyond pot calling kettle black to the owner of a 504 Peugeot comparing the cost of spare parts with people who drive Mercedes.
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