Who are the world's craziest rulers?

Dedicated to the tender memory of Saparmurat Niyazov RIP

By Robert Colvile

With the deaths of Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkemenistan – a maniac so megalo- that he renamed the days of the week after himself and his family – and of Kim Jong-un – a golfer so talented that he shot 38 under par on his first ever round, including five holes-in-one – some feared that the golden age of the crazed dictator had gone for good.

But Yahya Jammeh's decision to leave the Commonwealth, and subsequent outlining of his more unpleasant characteristics, has reminded us that there are still some old-fashioned brutes plugging away out there – and, more soberingly, that there are millions of people around the world who have to bear the consequences of their capricious decisions. Here are the leaders most likely to send you scurrying to the emigration queue:

1) Vladimir Putin

A controversial choice, given that the Russian president's chosen persona is "cold-eyed and ruthless" rather than "where are the men in white coats?". But Bad Vlad is showing alarming (or, for the purposes of this list, encouraging) signs of buying into his own publicity. There's the semi-naked calendar shots, the paranoia about foreigners and homosexuals, the diving expedition when he miraculously stumbled across buried treasure. He's a tiger-taming, fire-fighting, judo-champion hardman who plays on Angela Merkel's fear of dogs just because he can. As such, he's certainly earned a place on this list, if only out of fear of what he'd do if he were denied one.

2) Kim Jong-un 

 North Korea's dauphin of derangement loses points for having inherited the world's most terrifying cult of personality, rather than having built it. To date, he has yet to add more than a few individual touches to a regime built around the worship of the Kim family as, effectively, living gods. Still, the fact that the Brilliant Comrade devotes much of his time to having his ex-lover murdered by firing squad in front of Pyongyang's leading pop groups and befriending Dennis Rodman, while also threatening South Korea and the West with nuclear annihilation, speaks of the capacity to be both mockable and terrifying that marks out the all-time greats.

3) Isaias Afewerki

Afewerki, right, with fellow charmer Omar al-Bashir of Sudan

Eritrea's first and only president might not be a household name, but since winning independence in 1991 he's done his best to build his own low-budget version of North Korea, pursuing a policy of complete self-reliance. His People's Front for Democracy and Justice is not just the ruling party, but the only legal political entity, with the country managing the remarkable feat of ranking even lower for freedom of the press than Kim Jong-un's. As for the great leader himself, he's such a true believer in Maoist ideology that – according to Wikileaks – he berated the Chinese for their shameful compromises with the market.

4) Mahmoud Abbas

A surprise entry, given the fact that the Palestinian president is normally seen as something of a moderating figure in Middle Eastern politics – certainly when compared to, say, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the supreme leader of Iran. But while Khameini is happy to indulge in Holocaust denial, only Abbas has devoted a peer-reviewed thesis – and subsequent book – to the idea that not only was the death toll exaggerated, but the Nazis and Zionists were in secret collusion. (This academic masterwork was produced in Russia at a university run, bizarrely, by future prime minister Yevgeny Primakov.) Abbas has subsequently acknowledged that "the Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind." But he still clings to his pet theory that the Nazis and Zionists were connected.

5) Yahya Jammeh

There are many rulers who hate homosexuals (see Putin, V and Mugabe, R). There are some who hate witches. But there's only one who thinks gays are more dangerous than earthquakes or tsunamis, or who rounds up suspected witches and forces them to drink nightmarish concoctions of his own devising. Stir in the fact that the Gambia's long-serving dictator claims to have invented his own cure for AIDS made from herbs and bananas, and you have, as I pointed out yesterday, a marvel of mania. Certainly, his withdrawal from the Commonwealth will save his fellow leaders some rather awkward conversations.

6) Robert Mugabe

Where would such a list be without Comrade Bob? Zimbabwe's 89-year-old autocrat believes that his, and his nation's, woes spring largely from the efforts of a cabal of homosexuals organised by "the gay government of the gay United gay Kingdom". Plus, he once proclaimed himself "the Hitler of the time" – not really a mantle that anyone else would want to pick up. Oh, and he's killed tens of thousands of his own citizens, and ruined his country's once-prosperous economy. Still, it's not all bad news. In 2000, the Zimbabwe Banking Corporation launched a prize lottery for its customers. The first winner: Robert Mugabe. What are the chances?

7) Nicolas Maduro

Were he still alive, Maduro's predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez, would be a shoo-in for this list. But his successor shows encouraging signs of developing the kind of persecution complex that can easily tip into full-on mania. As well as offering asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, he's just expelled three US diplomats for collaborating with his opponents to wreck the Venezuelan economy and sabotage its power grid. In truth, with inflation running at more than 45 per cent, Maduro seems to be doing a fairly decent job of ruining his country without the Americans having to lift a finger.

8) Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

Africa's longest-serving leader – having ousted his uncle in 1979 – the leader of Equitorial Guinea might seem a poster boy for normality; he even chaired the African Union between 2011 and 2012. But the cult of personality that he's constructed around himself eclipses even that of Robert Mugabe. In 2003, the state radio station declared him "the country's god", "in permanent contact with the Almighty" who "can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell". The same year, he took control of the national treasury to preserve it from corrupt civil servants, moving much of the money out of their greedy reach and into accounts he personally controlled. He's been accused by his enemies of cannibalism, and is said to attribute his reported prostate cancer to witchcraft.

Still, the real craziness might have to wait till his son Teodorin takes over – Obiang Jr being perhaps Africa's greatest spendthrift, who's reportedly used Guinea's oil wealth to order a $380 million yacht (which is, as we report, more than three times the combined health and education budgets). A reassuring sign, perhaps, that the next generation of power-crazed despots are just waiting for their own chance to shine.