News
Fall Of The ‘King Of Kings’
He was one of the world’s most ruthless heads of state. He also was one of the most outlandish. Rarely has the leader of such a small nation played such a large role on the international stage. But Moammar finally lost his invincibility as he fell to the superior fire power of NATO-backed Libyan rebel troops in his homeland, Sirte.
Gadhafi, who had weathered assassination attempts, US air strikes, and years of international sanctions, died today in the desert town of Sirte where he was born, the rebel coalition claimed.
Before there was Osama Bin Laden, there was Moammar Gadhafi. For years he was Public Enemy No. 1 in the US, feared and loathed for bankrolling terrorism and revolution around the globe.
A Newsweek cover story in 1981 branded him “the most dangerous man in the world.” To President Ronald Reagan, he was “the mad dog of the Middle East.”
And that was before his regime’s most dastardly deed of all: the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, by Libyan agents who planted explosives in a suitcase. The crash killed 270 people, most of them Americans.
And then, Gadhafi undertook an astonishing reversal. He was one of the first Arab leaders to denounce the September 11 terrorist attacks. Two years later, Libya abandoned its weapons of mass destruction programs, assumed responsibility for the Pan Am bombing and agreed to pay $2.7 billion in restitution to the families of Lockerbie victims.
The US reciprocated, resuming diplomatic relations with Tripoli and lifting economic sanctions. But while Gadhafi’s political conduct changed, his eccentric behavior did not. Across his four decades in power, he flouted all the rules for how a head of state should act.
He surrounded himself with gun-toting female bodyguards, and for years he traveled with a voluptuous Ukrainian nurse. He brought along a Bedouin tent to sleep in when he traveled abroad, and once attended a summit in Belgrade with six camels and two horses in tow. Gadhafi wore flowing robes, favored oversized sunglasses and received Botox injections.
“Can I ask you something very directly, which may seem rude?” ABC News’ Barbara Walters asked Gadhafi in a 1989 interview in Tripoli. “In our country, we read that you are unstable, we read that you are mad. Why do you think this is? … Does it make you angry?”
“Of course it irritates me,” Gadhafi replied. “Nevertheless, I do believe that a majority of the people in the four corners of the globe do love me.”
Libya was one of the world’s poorest nations when Gadhafi was born in a Bedouin tent in 1942 to illiterate parents. Young Moammar showed promise, and so he became the first member of his family to attend secondary school.
He harbored outsized ambitions even as a teenager. Enamored of Gen. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power in neighboring Egypt, Gadhafi began conspiring with high school classmates to stage a similar revolution in Libya.
In September 1969, Gadhafi lead a small band of junior military officers in a bloodless coup, toppling Libya’s pro-Western ruler, King Idris. It was an audacious move since Gadhafi was a mere army lieutenant, just 27 years old.
Initially, Gadhafi enjoyed broad support. He took no formal title, calling himself the Supreme Guide or Brotherly Leader. He created a system of government called the “Jamahiriya,” or state of the masses, which called for Libya to be governed by local councils. But there would be no collective rule.
Moammar Gadhafi’s Flamboyant Dictatorship Is Over
He transformed Libya into a dictatorship, criminalizing dissent, creating a network of informers and executing opponents. He sent hit squads to hunt down dissidents “stray dogs,” he called them — who fled to Europe and the US.
Most significantly, Gadhafi squeezed foreign oil companies to give his regime nearly 80 percent of the revenue from Libya’s vast oil fields, a model that would be duplicated by other oil-producing states. It provided Gadhafi with the resources to cause havoc around the world. Harboring a deep resentment of the West, Gadhafi financed revolutionary movements in Africa, Asia and Europe — from the I.R.A. in Northern Ireland to Islamic radicals in the Philippines. He supported Palestinian terrorism, including the Black September movement blamed in the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Gadhafi’s conduct put him on a collision course with the United States. Soon after taking office, President Reagan severed diplomatic relations with Libya and slapped an embargo on its oil. Gadhafi upped the ante when Libyan agents orchestrated the bombing of a West Berlin disco in 1986, killing two U.S. servicemen. American warplanes bombed Gadhafi’s compound in retaliation, nearly killing the dictator.
The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 cemented Libya’s standing as a rogue state. The ensuing sanctions against him were so severe, Barbara Walters needed the State Department’s permission to visit Libya to interview Gadhafi.
Asked in that interview about Washington’s demand that he needed to “renounce international terrorism,” Gadhafi laughed. “This could be the response when someone is sponsoring terrorism, but when our official position is that we are against terrorism, such demand would be meaningless,” he said.
Gadhafi scoffed when Walters brandished a report accusing him of using surrogates to commit terrorism around the world. “What is the practical evidence, the concrete evidence?” he said. “These are all lies … only ink and paper.”
All of which made Gadhafi’s about-face after 9/11, his rejection of terrorism, even more striking. Reportedly, he shared his intelligence files on al Qaeda with the CIA., and allowed the US to use a Libyan site for the harsh interrogation of a terror suspect.
With the lifting of sanctions, US and international companies rushed into Libya to do business. World leaders like Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi paid visits.
Gadhafi and his country were pariahs no more.
Now rehabilitated, Gadhafi cast himself as a statesman, and in early 2009, he was elected to lead the African Union, a confederation of 53 nations.
But the makeover unraveled in August 2009 after Scotland freed the only person convicted in the Lockerbie bombing, a former Libyan agent named Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi. Although the release was described as a humanitarian gesture — Megrahi suffered from prostate cancer it triggered outrage in the U.S. and Britain. The outcry mushroomed when Megrahi returned to a hero’s welcome in Tripoli orchestrated by Gadhafi’s regime. Once again, Gadhafi appeared to be up to his old tricks.
Gadhafi’s ability to outrage was on full display during a subsequent visit to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Gadhafi ‘King of Kings’ No More
Introduced as “leader of the revolution, the president of the African Union, the king of kings of Africa,” Gadhafi railed and raged for 90 minutes, instead of the allotted 15. He ripped up a copy of the U.N. charter, demanded investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and compared the U.N. Security Council to al Qaeda.
But it was the Arab Spring that led to be Gadhafi’s downfall. In February 2011, the anti-government protests roiling the Arab world spread to Libya with a Day of Rage challenging his rule. More than 40 years of anger and resentment exploded in demonstrations across the country.
When the protests morphed into an uprising, Gadhafi responded with extreme force. As Gadhafi’s forces closed in on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, the UN Security Council authorized the use of force to protect civilians. And on March 19, US and European forces intervened, launching missiles and dropping bombs to assist the rebels.
The tide turned. In August, Gadhafi fled Tripoli as rebel forces closed in. After 42 years, his reign was over. But the wily leader’s whereabouts remained a mystery for months as the remnants of his security forces fought off rebels closing in on his strongholds.
At the time of his death, Gadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam and his chief of intelligence were wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity for the killing, wounding and imprisonment of civilians during the early stages of Libya’s uprising.
Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) have foiled attempts by drug trafficking syndicates to smuggle illicit substances concealed in carton walls, winter jackets, and body cream containers through Murtala Muhammed International Airport and a Lagos-based courier firm.
The agency said two consignments bound for Italy were intercepted at the Lagos airport, leading to the arrest of suspects linked to the shipments.
In a statement released yesterday, the agency’s spokesman, Femi Babafemi, said one of the suspects, 37-year-old Friday Ehianuka, was intercepted on Friday, March 20, 2026, while attempting to board an Ethiopian Airlines flight to Rome, Italy.
The statement partly read, “Two of the consignments heading to Italy were to be moved through the Lagos airport where two suspects linked to the shipments were promptly arrested.
“One of them, 37-year-old Friday Ehianuka, was going to Rome, Italy on Friday, March 20, 2026, when he was intercepted while attempting to board an Ethiopian Airlines flight with 2,698 pills of tramadol 225mg concealed in containers of skin-lightening body cream, all packed in the suspect’s luggage.
“In his statement, Ehianuka, who is a resident of Milan, confirmed that he was to be paid a negotiated fee in Euros if he had succeeded in trafficking the consignment to Italy.”
In another operation on Wednesday, March 18, Babafemi said NDLEA officers at the departure hall intercepted another passenger, Christian Agbonhese, attempting to board a Lufthansa flight to Milan.
A search of his luggage uncovered 23,150 pills of tramadol 225mg, 4,000 tablets of tapentadol 250mg, and 1,320 pills of tramadol 100mg concealed in two large winter jackets.
“No fewer than 23,150 pills of tramadol 225mg; 4,000 tablets of tapentadol 250mg; and 1,320 pills of tramadol 100mg, all concealed in two large winter jackets, bringing the total number of opioids recovered from him to 28,470 pills. The 38-year-old Agbonhese is also a resident of Milan,” the statement added.
In a separate operation at a courier firm in Lagos, Babafemi said NDLEA officers on Monday, March 16, intercepted two parcels of Loud, a strong strain of cannabis weighing 1kg, hidden in a carton shipped from the United States.
“Also thwarted was an attempt to export 158 grams of methamphetamine concealed in the walls of a carton to New Zealand,” he said.
In Kano State, operatives arrested Abdulkadir Mamuda, 35, with 102.5kg of skunk at Dan-Tsalle, while another suspect, Uche Johnson Festus, 47, was nabbed at Naibawa Gabas with 95.5kg of the same substance.
Babafemi said the agency also recovered 21,737 bottles of codeine-based syrup during a raid at Otto, Ijora area of Lagos on Wednesday, March 18, adding that two suspects, Chidiebere Anigbogu and Paul Nwagbara, were arrested the same day on the Third Mainland Bridge while conveying 8,380 bottles of the syrup.
In Edo State, operatives recovered 97.5kg of skunk from the residence of Akeem Idde, 37, in Ojah, Akoko-Edo Local Government Area on March 16.
In the FCT, officers intercepted a commercial bus along the Gwagwalada Expressway on March 18, recovering 91,840 pills of tramadol hidden in body compartments of the vehicle. The driver, Aminu Ali, 27, was arrested.
In Oyo State, a suspect, Bankole Bari, was on Tuesday, March 17, arrested at Oke-Oyan, Ibarapa LGA, with 71.2kg of skunk, which he smuggled into Nigeria from Benin Republic through the Oyan River.
In a similar development, “Not less than 586,000 pills of tramadol and Exol-5 were recovered by NDLEA operatives from Lawal Anas, 28, along Kaduna-Zaria Highway, Kaduna, on Tuesday, March 17, while 7,290 tablets of tramadol 225mg were seized from Musa Shuaibu, 22, at the same location on Friday, March 20,” Babafemi said.
In Taraba State, officers intercepted Aliyu Adamu, 26, along the Takum-Jalingo Highway with 77,660 capsules of tramadol, while in Adamawa State, six suspects were arrested in connection with the seizure of 82.8kg of tramadol in a truck in Yola.
The suspects include Ramatu Aliyu, Jungudo Abdullahi, Najid Abdullahi, Musa Mohammed, Usman Abdulrahim, and Musa Mohammed.
The agency said its commands across the country also intensified War Against Drug Abuse sensitisation campaigns in schools, worship centres, and communities during the week.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NDLEA, Brig. Gen. Buba Marwa (retd.), commended officers of the MMIA, DOGI, Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Edo, Oyo, FCT, Taraba, and Adamawa commands for the arrests and seizures, urging them to sustain the balanced approach to drug control efforts.
News
RSG Applauds FRSC, NDLEA For Enhancing Security In Rivers …As NDLEA Pushes For Drug Tests In Schools, NYSC Camps
The Rivers State Government has commended the dedication and collaboration of federal government agencies in sustaining security in the State.
Speaking during a courtesy visit by the State Commander of the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), CN Bature Dawa, in Port Harcourt, last week, the Secretary to the State Government, Dr. Dagogo Wokoma, said Governor Siminalayi Fubara appreciates the strong synergy between the agencies in promoting his administration’s vision of peace, prosperity and progress in the State.
Wokoma urged residents to remain law-abiding, noting that respect for the law is essential for good governance and sustainable development in all parts of the state.
He stated that the governor has remained committed to initiatives that promote peace and social order, stressing that the administration will continue to support programmes of federal agencies aimed at strengthening security and public safety.
“Our governor is committed to peace, progress and prosperity in Rivers State. I therefore encourage all residents, especially young people who are often targeted by those involved in drug abuse, to stay away from drugs, crime and reckless driving,” he said.
In his remarks, the State NDLEA boss, Dawa, disclosed that the agency has arrested 39 suspects in the state from December 2025 to date, including 16 new cases currently under investigation.
He explained that the NDLEA, through its Drug Demand Reduction and Drug Supply Control Units, has intensified efforts to curb the spread of illicit drugs and ensure offenders are brought to justice.
Dawa also called on parents and guardians to closely monitor their children, while urging hotel owners and managers to remain vigilant and prevent their facilities from being used for drug-related activities.
He further advocated the introduction of drug integrity tests in schools and within the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme as part of measures to discourage drug abuse among young people.
In a related development, Dr Wokoma received the Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), CC Inyang Umoh, during a courtesy visit, and urged residents to abide by road safety laws and drive in consideration of other road users.
In his remarks, the FRSC boss expressed appreciation to Governor Fubara for the continuous support to the Corps.
Muslims in Rivers State have commended Governor Siminialayi Fubara for his dedication and commitment to the development of the state.
They also lauded the governor for promoting peaceful co-existence among various religious groups in the state.
Vice President General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs ,Alhaji Nasil Awhelegbe Uhor, gave the commendation last Friday during the Eid-el Fitri prayer to mark the end of Ramadan fasting period, at the Port Harcourt Central Mosque, Niger Street, Port Harcourt.
Speaking to newsmen shortly after the prayer, Alhaji Uhor said Governor Fubara has shown exemplary leadership in the affairs of the state.
Uhor who is the leader of the South South Muslim Ummah of Nigeria, called on Muslims to remain committed to the ideal of peace and fear of the Almighty Allah.
According to the Rivers State Islamic leader, the message is for Muslims to imbibe and allow the lessons of Ramadan to sink into their lives and shape their ways of doing things.
He urged Muslims to imbibe the culture of love and respect for one another.
“My message is that all Muslims should imbibe and allow the lessons of Ramadan to sink with them,” he advised.
Uhor stressed the need for Muslims and all Nigerians to remain patriotic, while avoiding all forms of anti-social behaviours.
He also called on the political leaders to put the country first, stressing that there is no need for Nigerians to continue to wallow in abject poverty when the country is so rich with natural resources.
Also speaking, the Chief Imam of Rivers State, Alhaji Ibrahim S Yalo, urged Muslims to fear God, and speak the truth always.
According to him, time has come for Nigerians to cultivate the habit of peaceful coexistence, speak the truth and be each others keeper.
“Nigerians own a duty to ensure peace, live together in fear of God and speak the truth always,” he said.
By: John Bibor
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