Recently, I had managed to keep my promise, to prevent myself from watching the macabre drama that has now become a national pastime: The Antics of Al-Mustapha.

Of course, like any other person, I love a good laugh. But I haven't found reason to be amused about the court jests of either Mustapha, Rogers, Diya or any other of the dramatis personae. My simple reason for holding that view is that there is nothing entertaining about killers and masterminds of the bastardisation of public sensibilities, about public liars and their confessions, accusations and denials, or anything else they have to say.

So, all week long, I minded my business, ignoring even the re-opening game of daggers in the Senate. Indeed I had become so bent at not being perturbed that, even NEPA's near- total black-out was no longer a problem to me. Just so that I could keep my sanity, I tuned off everything and buried myself in my work.

Then came weekend. Again, I decided to go to work on Saturday, partly still to avoid having to hear or talk about Nigeria. If I stayed home, someone might come up with tidbits about Diya or Mustapha, or my two year-old daughter would ask me to explain "why can't NEPA give us light again". So, again I escaped and hid myself behind my office desk until my daughter dragged her mum to come and fetch me at 7 p.m. and got me to promise take her out to lunch after Sunday worship.

I thought I had won. You see Sunday is different. I could just go to worship, and take my family to a nice noon lunch in some restaurant where there would be no power outage, and only Channel O on television-not Oputa Panel on NTA, or any other such sordid stuff to ruin my week-long bliss.

I was just so happy when Sunday came and we were heading to the restaurant. Then I made a terrible mistake. I allowed myself to patronise the news-vendor. Tell me how I could resist reading a newspaper, when I already had a copy. That's how I ruined my week, my Sunday, and my appetite.

Not that I set out to read the painful headlines about the confessing generals, or the migraine-inducing twists of the Gore - Bush wrestle for the White House, or the Damilola tragedy or any such thing. I even skipped the details of how 16 University of Ibadan students died in a road accident, in my battle still to keep my sanity.

I thought I had at last found something both compelling and safe when I met Pat Utomi's guest column article on the back page of this newspaper. The title was a particular gastronomic promise: "A thought to digest this season." At last, I felt I had something that could stimulate my appetite, give me a lift and without bringing up my ulcer.

Well, I was wrong. Because totally and thoroughly, Utomi's piece ruined my Sunday, cost me my appetite for lunch and made mincemeat of my week-long success at escapism.

Now, ask me how one rather well - intentioned article written with as much optimism as the man could muster do so much damage to my psyche?

Since I now have to talk about it, here is what Utomi discussed - and what it got me to be so sad about. He talked about - what else? - the Nigerian problem, which is now, more of a compound disaster than just a problem. If the right word must be used; the utter rudderlessness of the present leadership. He reminded me of what I have been so pensive about: the fact that even after Nigeria emerged from decades of destructive military mis-rule in the year 2000, it's almost certain we will fail, because those who govern are simply incapable of thinking in constructive and historical terms. That prospect of injustifiable and continuing failure to set this nation on the path of progress, like most other nations, is particularly painful to contemplate.

Actually, Utomi's piece started on a positive key and ran that way to the end; putting forward such redeeming examples as EI-Rufai and Donald Duke.

What I blame for my indigestion is the thought I allowed myself - how so few such people are among the many that command high offices. Presently, we have hundreds of national legislators, scores of governors, scores of ministers and thousands of aides, not counting those in leadership at local government level. Each of these has a chance in about one hundred and twenty million to make a difference, and at least four years to do so. A great chance, if you come to think of it, if only enough of those people are really ashamed of what we have made of our status and well being as a people.

To illustrate why I am so pessimistic of any good outcome, consider Anyim. Anyim Pius Anyim has pretty much the same chance that Jerry Rawlings, Bill Clinton, JF Kennedy, Vaclav Havel, Fidel Castro and our very own Murtala Mohammed had: a splendid combination of youthful vitality, the challenge to prove oneself, the good position, at a momentous period in their nation's history. And what is Anyim doing with all that? Building a resplendent mansion in his backwater home without a thought how to develop the place in any real sense; jesting in the Senate Chamber, including backslapping and grinning to empty seats of a dwindling attendance; throwing a nauseating national feast to bury an over-preserved dead mother, and everything else he shouldn't be doing, considering what went before his generation and the stakes ahead of it, and considering how improbable his present position actually was, and is.

Coming after the pre-independence generation failed to provide any further vision beyond independence; the next generation had a higher stake in case of failure to lead the nation forward. The closest any one of that generation has come to running the nation is the present misfit that Anyim represents, a really depressing thing to behold, a disaster un-mitigated even by the Benin posturing of the under-50 politicians.

For me, this is a particularly poignant pain, as it does not even begin to help the prospects of those of us coming immediately next to the forty - generation. Most of my generation have not even begun to show potential on any scales worthy of reckoning. Ten years after graduation, most of us are still trying to prove good enough to retain a job. The few of us who thought we could rather start something and employ others instead have found the entrepreneurial environment so harsh we are almost wondering what we did to ourselves being so fastidious.

Now, this situation wasn't just created by past and present leaders failing to make policies that could make the economy work. They have actually gone ahead to wreck the moral foundations in which our society could have sustained its soul, even if it didn't thrive economically. They have, through years of jaundiced values, public display of ill-gotten wealth, through making honest living an impossible mockery, made the society morally soul-less. Life in Nigeria has been reduced to a set of orgies of insensitivity, such as the present public appetite for the AlMustapha and Sergeant Rogers serial.

Thinking of these things, you see, I lost my cool and had a headache. To finally nail my appetite, there on page 47 of the same ThisDay of last Sunday was this story with pictures of the man who roasts whole cows for the President, the senate president, and others who we are waiting for to see them govern in such a way that Nigerians can find three square meals and relief from dehumanization.

Honestly, thinking of Nigeria is increasingly painful, something I do only when I have an antacid ready. The state of my nation gives me heartburn.

Dozie Arinze is the editor and publisher of Insights Journal, Lagos, Nigeria