Guess who is playing the Nigerian game in distant shores? It is one old man called Robert Mugabe. He has not mastered the technique of rigging elections (a Nigerian pastime), and he went ahead and messed up the ancient arts of rigging elections and election malpractices in such terrible ways that I am forced to demand that he should be dragged by his beards and smothered on the nearest election booth. It may not entirely be his fault, but no man should jump into a raging river without first having some lessons on how to swim. Now, the septuagenarian is drowning and clutching at straws.

I blame the masters of the game (Nigerian politicians), who have refused to publish books on election rigging and make it a course of study. If they had, Mugabe's election rigging would have been tidier and more defensible. Mugabe, on the other hand, should have taken a trip to Nigeria for technology-transfer on election-rigging, before attempting to do what he had no training or knowledge of. Even nursery school pupil would assert that it was unthinkable that the old man would simply hijack innocent people and force them to vote for him and at the same time intimidate the opposition supporters and kill some of them in order to stop them from voting for his rival, Morgan Tsavingarai. The run-off of the Zimbabwean presidential election was a study in undisguised and organized mayhem and state-sponsored confusion.

Of course we Nigerians had a good laugh at this comical amateur-rigger. What have voters got to do with rigging? Our ancestors used to use those techniques in the 60's and no one has heard of those techniques anymore. There are more advanced methods of rigging elections than molestation, killing and cohesion. Thugs do pretty well, but they have their limitations. They mess up things a bit and may leave a trail of blood. In the 80's they came in handy and were more concerned with hijacking ballot boxes than with molesting people. Though people who tried to stop them from having access to ballot boxes usually received some kind of "physical discouragement," they largely concentrated on taking and stuffing ballot boxes with voting slips.

Modern rigging has become digital. Says a friend who went to a polling booth and waited all day for the election materials which never came and at the end of the day results were announced for the booth, "In years past they used to humor us by allowing us to vote even though they would hijack the ballot boxes and change the figures. Now they do not even allow you to vote at all."

Tsavingirai, the opposition leader, who pulled out of the presidential run-off because of the killing and intimidation of his supporters, should have known that politics is not a game for the squeamish. He had won the majority vote in the election but not enough to be elected. Mugabe, his opponent, plays hardball and claims that he has eight college degrees. He further maintains that if it were not that "aggression" is not a course of study, he would have had a degree in it too. Mugabe has a Nigerian heart, his only problem is that he has not been home before and do not know how to play the game.

Tsavingirai too has a lot to learn from Nigeria. In Nigeria, in spite of the fact that the Peoples Democratic Party usually let the majority have their say, and the party have its way (in elections), a sprinkle of other parties still contest the elections and put up a good show of hoping to win. They lose and go to court.

The cautionary aspect of this entire drama is that at 84, one would have expected Uncle Mugabe to be a statesman and more concerned with leaving a lasting legacy of good governance for posterity. But he is the last of the breed of sit-tight rulers who would rather die in office and have a state burial than leave it for some other less worthy mortal. He is the archetypical street toughie or bully. See why I like him?

Every bully usually have his admirers and Mugabe seems to have a lot of them - apart from me. One of them is Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, the official president of Mugabe Fans Club. Mbeki would forever be known as the man who succeeded Nelson Mandela - and nothing else. The stature gap between Mandela and Mbeki in terms of character is comparable to the height gap between the seven footer basketball great, Michael Jordan, and the midget, King Pago who used to sing for the musician, Victor Uwaifo. His only legacy may be presiding over the law establishing same-sex marriages in South Africa, and the next is supporting Mugabe. Did you say Thabo...who? Mbeki!

Mbeki is watching Mugabe's escapades with a lot of interest. He fought to block sanctions from being imposed on Zimbabwe by the United Nations and stood against it when the G-8 (Group of eight major industrial nations) met in Japan. He is not alone in trying to prop up support for the "King Kong" of Zimbabwe. African leaders who met in the Africa Union meeting recently came out with an indistinct censure of Robert Mugabe. But we Nigerians understand this kind of betrayal by the so-called African leaders. We have felt the pain before. "Woe unto those who look upon them for help!" says my friend, Jack.

When the evil General, Sani Abacha, executed Kenule Saro-Wiwa and eight others, we looked forward to the Africa Union for justice. The tin pot dictators turned a blind eye to us and looked the other way. The British Commonwealth rushed to our help and suspended Nigeria from its fold, and the United Nations and the European Union strongly condemned it. The Africa Union is a witchcraft cult which cannot condemn a fellow witch for doing evil.

It may be symbolic that while the G-8 leaders were considering ways to lift Africa out of the dungeons of poverty, Mugabe was involved in the same political misadventure which has made Africa the poorest continent on the surface of the earth. The saga of Mugabe and his support by African leaders reflect the hiccups and turmoil that have marked Africa's road to true democratization. But still I see in him the makings of a Nigerian.