The questions that concentrated my mind penultimate Sunday as I came out of the arrival hall of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, and beheld the frightening decay in Lagos were; Why are our leaders desperately wicked? Why do we, as a people, deceive ourselves?

I came back from the United Kingdom on September 15, having completed my scholarship programme at the Cardiff University in Wales. It is instructive that the scholarship was awarded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and administered by the British Council. For the one year the programme lasted, I deliberately stayed away from Nigeria, having decided to watch the 2007 political drama from a distance. I wanted to observe first hand how Nigerians are perceived and how biased or otherwise that perception is.

Truth be told, the international community does not have any respect for our country despite our very strategic position in Africa; position enhanced by our enormous oil wealth and huge population. And they have good reason for their undisguised contempt. How else do you treat a people that have elected, by choice, to live in the stone age in a 21st century world?

As we left the airport and drove into town, my first shock was the terrible state of Lagos roads. The potholes that were there one year ago when I left Nigeria have become craters. And I ask; What did Bola Tinubu do with all the money that accrued to Lagos State in the eight years that he was governor? Of course, roads in other parts of the country – both federal and state roads – are not likely to be better and that also raises the question; What did our leaders do with all the money the country earned between 1999 and 2007?

I have not had any electric power supply since I came back. I have been making use of candles and torchlight while my generator is being serviced. And I ask; How could former president Olusegun Obasanjo spend trillions of naira on the power sector and still left electricity supply in a worse state than he met it?

I wrote this piece longhand, the first time I would do so in the past one year because without electricity at home, I couldn’t use my laptop. In Europe and many countries in Asia, electricity, water supply, good road network are all taken for granted. Our leaders visit these places almost every week and yet they come back without any qualms of conscience. A visit to Terminal Four at the Heathrow Airport, London, is akin to going to the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in Abuja. You will see most of our big men either coming into the UK or travelling back to Nigeria via the British Airways. Most of them spend their weekends in Europe, America and Asia, away from the chaos they are creating at home. Each trip they make costs the common man who bears the brunt of their luxury millions of naira. Almost everybody I have met since I came back is complaining that life has become unbearable. They wear long faces and you could tell by their countenance that they are suffering. Yet, those who call themselves our leaders are living it up in every nook and cranny of the world. They are as rich as the people they govern are poor.

Why are our leaders desperately wicked? Why would somebody in power, a position from which he could use the people’s patrimony to solve their problems decide to steal all the money rather than immortalise his name through service? For instance, why would the Speaker of the House of Representatives spend N628 million in renovating her official residence in a country where over 90 per cent of the population have no decent accommodation? But nobody should make the mistake of thinking that she is alone in this unconscionable rape of our patrimony. She has only become a metaphor for the absolute contempt which our so-called leaders have for us.

Some have argued that it is greed. That is true but only to an extent. Greed alone does not explain why leaders in Nigeria behave the way they do. The problem is much more fundamental. It is psychological, it borders on lunacy.

Let nobody make any mistake about this; Nigeria is not making any progress. And let nobody be deceived by the defeatist argument bandied by some people that it took the developed world aeons to get to their present level of development. Why it is true that Europe did not develop overnight, it is also a fact that they were busy inventing the technology that aided their development. Today, we are no longer re-inventing the wheel. We are not inventing the computer; the internet age is already here with us. The aircraft has already been manufactured for our convenience. This is the golden age of human technology and what countries in Asia are doing is to simply plug in somewhere and maximise the technology that is already at their disposal. The only thing that is required is selfless leadership; a leadership that places country above self; a leadership motivated by service and not greed and avarice.

Such leadership is in very short supply here because nobody believes in the country. The consequence is that the people also have lost confidence in the country. Nigeria has become a big cow that everybody is milking. Nobody is thinking of how to feed this cow so that it could be nourished. The result is the pervasive systemic rot.

On Friday, I went to the office of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) in Ojodu to renew my driver’s license which expired while I was out of the country. I was stopped at the gate by an official who asked why I came to their office. I told him expecting that he would direct me to the appropriate office. He asked me to open the passenger’s door. I did and he hopped into the car, leaving his duty post. "Where can I renew my license?" I asked him again. "That is where I am taking you to," he replied. "But you should have simply directed me instead of leaving your duty post," I said. "Don’t you want me to help you or do you want to be cheated?" he riposted. I didn’t answer. He took me to another officer who thanked him profusely, demanded for my old passport, asked me to sit down and disappeared into another office.

He re-appeared 20 minutes later and took me to one of the offices. "How much does it cost to renew a driver’s license?" I asked him. "Eleven thousand naira," he answered. I sat up immediately and was leaving his office when he begged me to come back.

"Is it because I told you N11,000 that you were leaving?" he said. "Okay, let me tell you the truth. If you want your licence in two weeks time, you pay N4,500; if you want it on Monday, the price is N6,000 and if you want it today, you will pay N7,000. If you doubt me, you can try any other officer and see if you can get it cheaper. But I can assure you my price is the cheapest." I asked him if different officers have different prices and he answered in the affirmative. Why? He said that is the way they operate.

I shook my head. Hasn’t the government a fixed price for the renewal of driver’s licence? What magic will the officer do to renew my license the same day if I pay higher that cannot be done if I pay N4,500. Is it a function of money or the technology?

At the end of the day, I opted to wait for two weeks, paid N4,500, demanded for a receipt and got none. I was told that FRSC officials do not issue receipt, because the money is paid to the coffers of the Lagos State government. They only renew licence. It is absurd.

Our greatest problem is that as a people, we deceive and cheat ourselves. We live with the illusion that Nigeria’s economy will be one of the world’s 20 biggest economies by the year 2020. But the reality is that we are doing everything to make Nigeria one of the poorest countries in the world.

As a people, we think we are smart. But we are not because the joke is on us, not on anybody else. Truth be told, we have been left behind by the developing world.

                                                                                        By Ikechkwu Amaechi