Rat As A Metaphor —Isaac Asabor

Amidst thousands of political terminologies and phrases that can be found in lexicons, one of the phrases that continues to excite me is “Rat Race”. I must confess that the killing of Muammar Gaddafi of Libya made me to be obsessed with the phrase. Not even the legendary Bob Marley and the Wailers’ musical lyrics on Rat Race in one of his hits could make the phrase “Rat Race” create a lasting impression in my subconscious or inspire me to embark on an etymological journey in search of the relevance of the phrase in global politics.

When the widely publicised uprising in Libya against the tyrannical government of the late Gaddafi was at its apogee, Gaddafi, in his unflappable mannerism, for the umpteenth time called the people that took their protests to the streets and squares, “Rats”. He once issued a command that his loyalists should kill the Rats (the protesters) without fear or favour. I watched him on the television screaming that the Rats should be killed. It is the height of arrogance for a leader to command his loyalists to kill those protesting against his tyrannical government.

Given the unbridled obsession for Rats which “Gadago”, as I funnily and mockingly called him, exhibited during the uprising that eventually consumed him and put an end to his tyrannical government, I made reference to my dictionary and found out that the phrase “the rat race” simply means “ceaseless and undignified competition for success in one’s career, social status, etc”. Further reference to the dictionary revealed that in a figurative sense it means a person who deserts a cause. (This emanates from the belief that rats desert a ship that will sink or be wrecked).

Having satisfied my intellectual curiosity about the lexical meanings of rats and rat race, I deduced from my findings that Rat is a politician. If there is anything I would remember Gaddafi for, it is the “ratty” contribution he made towards the development of world’s political jargon. Naturally, Rat is a rodent. According to the dictionary, a rodent is an animal, e.g. a rat, rabbit, squirrel or beaver, which gnaws things with its strong teeth specially adapted for this purpose. Rat is destructive by nature. If rats invade a farm, the crops in that farm are bound to be completely destroyed in few hours by the rats. Figuratively put, are politicians all over the world not destroying the sustaining resources of their respective countries? As rats would do to the farms, many countries in the world have been impoverished by politicians so much that one would not be wrong to unequivocally say that politicians are rats.

From another perspective, I have been obsessed with the question of, how can rats be in a race? In the aforementioned dictionary meaning, “the rat race” simply means ceaseless and undignified competition for success in one’s career, social status, etc.

Given the foregoing definition, it is no more news that politicians all over the world are always engaged in “ceaseless and undignified” competition for victories during any election. Politicians do not accept defeat even when it is very obvious that they failed. They are always engaged in power struggle, and I have seen rats behave the same way. I have seen rats struggle over a piece of bread or the like. Their struggles are always reminiscent of that of politicians struggling for power.

Though Gaddafi may have stood on the principle of casus belli ( a latin principle that justifies war), he acted like a rat. Rats are wont to step on traps that have food even when they are aware of lurking danger. Gaddafi ought to have known that there was no way he could have survived the uprising but he was perhaps holding on to the aforementioned principle of war.

Paradoxically, given the various online reports provided by some international media organisations and news headlines placed on the pages of some prominent browsers on the internet, that Muammar Gaddafi was killed while hiding in a drainage pipe, one can conclude that he died like a rat. What a shame! I know when water is not flowing in the drainage pipe, rats are wont to use it as a route of escape, especially when they are running for safety.

However, it is said that the sweetest honey is collectively produced by bees that sting. Despite the shameful death of Gaddafi, there are lessons inherent in it for leaders to learn from. The first lesson to learn, particularly from when the uprising was ignited, is that leaders must not underrate the people, no matter how strong and powerful they are in their political positions. Laughable, enough, Muammar Gaddafi never relented in seeing people as rats even when he was obviously embattled. He forgot that the people he called rats are the people God used to put him in power. Leaders should please treat the people with respect. As a popular aphorism says, “power belongs to the people”.

Still in the same nexus, a leader should be wise enough to peacefully relinquish power whenever the people begin to protest against his style of leadership or when they begin to yearn for a change.

Another lesson to be learnt is that leaders, at any level of leadership, should learn to accomplish the projects or programmes they have for the people before the termination of their tenures, and honourably quit the political stage for others. With this attitude to leadership, posterity would always remember them. To me, such attitude to leadership makes one to be more accomplished in life than dying like rats.

Leaders should always be conscious of the fact that any position one occupies in life is ephemeral. Therefore, they should lead well in order to write their names on the good pages of posterity.

King Solomon, regarded by Christians as the greatest King that ever lived, said in the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 2 verse 8 “I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasures of kings and of the provinces; I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts.” And in verse 11, he said “Then I looked at all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do; and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun”. This was the confession of a king who saw the beauty of kingship in all its ramifications, and yet he lamented that all was vanity. Then, why are today’s leaders not learning from this biblical experience of vanity?

In addition, leaders should lead in accordance with people’s expectation and they should always respect the people. They should not see the people as rats. A good leader should not literarily mount the rooftop with a megaphone call the people that gave him the power and opportunity to serve as rats.

In our own clime, some leaders have indirectly called us rats. They may not have phonetically pronounced the word “rat” but they are calling us rats through obnoxious policies and programmes.

Regrettably, the death of 1,000 Gaddafis cannot assuage the collective sorrow and pain caused millions of families in Libya. The death of young and old Libyans through the tyrannical tendencies of Gaddafi during his 42-year reign was so bad that no leader that is alive today should replicate that his style of leadership.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that in the future hall of shame that Gaddafi’s name would surely make the top ten list of dreaded dictators that sojourned this earth. Names like Benito Mussolini of Italy, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Emperor Hiro Hito of Japan, Adolph Hitler of Germany, Joseph Stalin of USSR, Idi Amin of Uganda, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, etc. would also make the top ten list. And finally we should not see the reign of Gaddafi as beneficial to mankind. I heard somebody say he started well but ended so badly. In leadership, one should start well and finish well. I urge our leaders to learn a big lesson from Gaddafi’s demise.

—Asabor writes from Lagos