The Tyrant In Abuja

By Iyoha John Darlington
The world has lived through great civilizations and civilization itself has had its worst enemies. Man driven by lust for power and personal aggrandizement plays god to others and we have encountered with so many of them through the ages. The historic tripartite pact of 1936 saw a fusion of power blocs. Benito Mussolini ruled by caprice in fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler allied with Emperor Hirohito of Japan in a bid to bestride the world like a colossus.

*Buhari 

Other outposts of tyranny include Jordan under King Abdullah, Libya under Ghaddafi, Cuba under Fidel Castrol, the rogue regimes of North Korea and Iran, Iraq under Saddam, Uganda under Amin the late despot and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe who has ruled the country for nearly four decades.These were cold-blooded brutes who hid under a cause to unleash fury on their subjects and silenced dissenting voices in their political domains.

A lot of lives were lost and the world and most regions experienced unprecedentedly abysmal demographic change calling to mind the attempted extermination of the Jewish race out of which six million Jews gassed to death where they were held in death camps and other million of lives that were lost in World War11. Thousands of unarmed civilians mainly Kurds were killed in Halabja poison gas attack by the regime in Baghdad under Saddam Hussein, Iron-fisted Benito Mussolini clamped down on his own people while he ruled over Italy.

Back home in Africa, the State Research Bureau, Amin's secret agents killed many Ugandans some of whose flesh he fed on like a cannibal. These were all dark moments in human history. As luck would have it they all methodically took their unceremonious exits from the earth under unfortunate circumstances.

Is Autumn Finally Here For Robert Mugabe?

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Robert Mugabe, the 91-year old president of Zimbabwe – that beautiful but horribly impoverished country tucked away in the Southern part of Africa – has always managed to emerge colourful in his endless battle of wits with the West. He has over the years been able to retain the admiration and support of a sizable percentage of his people (despite the biting economic hardship in his country) and remained the toast of quite a number of African intellectuals.

**President Mugabe and wife, Grace 

Even his worst enemies would admit that he is very intelligent, well-informed and articulate. At 91, he is yet to show any convincing signs that age is eating into his well-cultivated intellect and psychological bearing. Always impeccably turned out in well-tailored suits, Mugabe remains many people’s pleasant idea of ageing gracefully and a delight to watch at press conferences or interviews.

Although, the recent decision of the European Union (EU) to relax sanctions on Mugabe’s country might represent a grudging admission by the West that, perhaps, it is gradually losing the argument over Zimbabwe , it remains a glaring fact that Mugabe presides over a very sick country. The United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) said two weeks ago that 16% of Zimbabwe ’s population “are projected to be food insecure at the peak of the 2015-16 lean season, the period following harvest when food is especially scarce.” According to the WFP, this situation “represents a 164% increase in food insecurity compared to the previous season.”

The Zimbabwean dollar is long dead and dressed for burial – brutally murdered by hyperinflation that hit an unprecedented 500 billion per cent in 2008 according to several reports (mostly in the Western media) and 231,000,000% according to the official account. A couple of years ago, a Zambian friend showed me a 40 billion Zimbabwean dollar bill which he said could not buy a loaf of bread. Looking back now, one can even refer to that period as the finest hour for the Zimbabwean currency. In January 2009, Zimbabwe introduced a One Trillion Dollar (Z$1000 tr) note whose worth was placed at about US$30 (£20). Since then, the currency has received even more devastating battering and living in Zimbabwe , according to reports, has been one bit of a hell, with the hapless citizens being regularly referred to as poor, starving billionaires.

In June this year (2015), the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (the country’s Central Bank) intent on formally removing the worthless Zimbabwean dollars from the banking system asked the citizens to start exchanging the billions, trillions and quadrillions of the local currency in their bank accounts or hoarded at home for just a few US dollars or cents, as the case may be. In a statement in Harare , the Reserve Bank governor, John Mangudya, advised the “banking public [to] visit their banks to establish the balances which were in their accounts.” He explained that officials of the apex bank “have interacted with the banks and they still have all the information, which we as the Reserve Bank also authenticated," so, they were not envisaging any difficulties in the exchange process.