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‘You should come and live in Nigeria,' Ketiwe proposed. ‘It's good here.'

She and Ledum raided the fridge while painting a picture of my potential life. ‘You can marry one of those Big Men,' they cooed. ‘And you could be Minister for Culture and Tourism! They will like this your accent.'

‘No,' I said. ‘I'd change it. It doesn't sound right in Nigeria.' I didn't like having a foreign accent here. It marked me out and robbed my words of their venom and authority, especially when arguing with okada men or fellow bus passengers.

‘No!' Ledum insisted. ‘They like real English accents, not like those fake ones.' Radio and television broadcasters in Nigeria sometimes strive for English pronunciation but often end up simulating a hybrid of Dutch and drunk Nigerian. A broadcaster trying to say, ‘I will give you the information on Saturday,' in an English accent usually ends up sounding something like this: ‘Ay weel gif you thee informaiyshon on Saahtordayy.'

The right accent was all very well, but did I have the qualifications to become a government minister? Ledum and Keti said that having a foreign degree of
any
sort would get me any government job, regardless of my experience. Their enthusiasm opened a door to a macrocosm of exciting possibilities, and for a moment I seriously considered living in Nigeria. But I didn't have the appetite for struggling financially. Ketiwe was still looking for work and had no place of her own. Doctors in Abuja are paid
50,000 per month, around £200. Ketiwe and her fellow young doctors blamed their low pay on the older generation of medics. In order to cut hospital costs, the chairman of the Medical Association had recently called for interns to stop being paid. Boosting hospital budgets at the
expense of junior staff was a more viable option than asking the government or patients for extra money. I wasn't sure if I was prepared to live in a country where qualified doctors can't find employment easily. The system seemed too difficult and unpredictable; I might flounder without meritocracy's comforting crutch.

But the system's fluidity can be liberating if one is able to ride it rather than being steamrollered by it. Sitting in my brother's sun-saturated living room, eating lunch prepared by the cook, I could see the positive side of living in Nigeria: more living space, lots of family support, not being a racial minority, enjoying a certain freedom that comes from being restricted in one's choices and expectations. I wouldn't have to explain myself if I declined alcohol on a night out, and I could grow old and fat without losing my social standing.

 

Nini and Junior invited me to see their offices at Villa, the vice-president's complex. The buildings are scattered in a compound beneath Aso Rock, the iconic inselberg that looms over Abuja like a giant steak-and-kidney pudding. Millions of years of wind and water erosion had worn down the ground in the Abuja region, except for a few chunks of resistant rock that now erupted from the landscape in great mounds.

After passing through security gates of the government compound, my taxi steered along palm-lined avenues, past several clusters of buildings, with chauffeurs and armed security men leaning against lustrous 4 x 4s outside. Disdain for politics in general didn't stop me feeling like a cowed and shabby speck in the face of so much officialdom. This was also enemy territory I was invading – the military dictatorship that killed my father was based at Aso Rock. Walking around it sent a chill of hostility through me even though my brother now worked here under a new dispensation.

Junior's office was startlingly shabby compared to the ostentation outside. The ceiling tiles bulged with age, the faux-marble floor begged
to be cleaned, and dusty leather armchairs cluttered the unmanned reception area. I had expected a classier outfit for someone in Junior's position as an assistant adviser to the president, but in the Nigerian government ethnicity and budget are intertwined: our federal republic is modelled on the US political system, with representatives and senators from each of our thirty-six states. As an assistant adviser to the president, Junior had no official attachment to any federal state, yet his budget still came from the Rivers State government because that's where Ogonis come from. Ethnicity pervades a lot more of government structure than I'd imagined.

Nini's offices were further down the road in Villa itself, a handsome, new-looking edifice designed in a neo-Islamic style, with white walls that deflected the brilliant sunshine. How ironic that this seat of government, so pristine and fetching, presided over Nigeria's disarray.

The new government had inspired tentative optimism among some people. The general elections, held in April 2007, brought a new president (under the same PDP ruling party) into power. But the elections were said to be sullied with irregularities and vote-rigging. Politicians allegedly bribed electoral officials to turn a blind eye to the fiddling or stuffing of ballots. Observers were beaten up or turned away from polling stations by policemen and gang members. In some areas, reported voter turnouts outnumbered the ballots. The PDP won 70 per cent of the vote. But it was the first time Nigeria had passed from one democracy to another without a military coup. People were mildly grateful for that.

The new president, Umaru Musa Yar'Adua was a quiet aristocrat from the Fulani ethnic group. An obscure former chemistry lecturer, he had barely travelled outside Nigeria before becoming president, although his late brother was vice-president under Obasanjo in the 1970s. Rarely for a politician, Yar'Adua had no history of corruption (he was the first Nigerian president to declare his assets), but some suspect that as a friend and possible
puppet of his predecessor, Obasanjo, he was unlikely to bring genuine change.

In 2003, the government tasked the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) with investigating political corruption. In the early days of the new administration, several governors were charged by the EFCC, but when a powerful politician from Delta State was accused of financial misdemeanours, the head of the EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu, was suddenly removed from his post and bundled away on ‘study leave'. The EFCC charges appeared to be selective, letting several governors off the hook. The public, some of whom were initially optimistic, was disgusted but unsurprised. It appeared to be a witch-hunt for lesser politicians who had fallen out of favour with the top echelons.

When I arrived at Villa, all these state governors were attending an important meeting. They clambered out of shiny black 4 x 4s, wearing sunglasses and traditional
agbada
robes. ‘Your Excellency' is how these politicians are hubristically addressed. They moved with the ease of people who know they're accountable to no one. I believe that you can tell from a politician's walk whether they're part of a true democracy or not: to me, the catwalk swagger of Russia's Vladimir Putin contrasts tellingly with British politicians who mince self-consciously past disparaging camera lenses, slaves to public opinion. Many of the Nigerian politicians I saw before me seemed old, patrician and slow – the very opposite of the caffeinated, productive vigour of Washington, DC or London lobbyism.

Nigeria's rumour mills spun a picture of our politicians as players in a game of intrigue, strategising, mutual back-scratching and back-stabbing. Ministers try to manoeuvre ahead of one another, mindful of the skeletons in each other's closets. Allegiances, created out of short-term expediency, run the constant risk of collapsing into a betrayal of some kind. Somehow these politicians find a strength and appetite for it all. I wondered whether the endless
power struggles have selectively bred politicians to become more cunning with every new decade. A cousin of mine once described the power-hunger of politicians by relaying a conversation he had with a friend about wealth and power. When my cousin quoted Shakespeare's ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,' his friend replied, ‘Give me the crown and I'll take the uneasy.'

Nigeria's political system reminded me of my school canteen, when we'd line up to take biscuits from the pile on a tray in the dining room. All it took was for one child (often myself, I confess) to step out of line and snatch a handful before the entire process degenerated into a no-rules scramble.

‘The state has completely collapsed,' my cousin told me. ‘Nobody trusts it any more.'

Nigeria's chaos wasn't an embarrassment to our politicians. I was starting to think the disorder was vital to their operations, the ideal context for power and enrichment. I heard angry speculation that the people who sell generators will bribe NEPA workers to sabotage the electricity grid in order to boost demand for home power supplies. Whether it was true or not, our grafting politicians always find ways of living with such appalling infrastructure: emergency airlifts to European hospitals for heart bypass surgery, or private helicopter rides to avoid dangerous roads. All very convenient, but where's the joy in owning a fancy car when it has to travel over potholed roads? What was the attraction in living in a palace powered by noisy private generators instead of the state electricity supply? I couldn't understand why these kleptomaniacs preferred to be kings of a slum rather than live amongst equals in paradise.

I asked people what was wrong with Nigerian politicians. ‘They're just selfish,' I was repeatedly told; ‘They're bush,' one family friend said, referring to the politicians' uncivilised acceptance of squalor; ‘You're assuming they have your civic-mindedness and sense of national pride,' the friend went on. ‘That mindset comes
naturally to
you
, but it doesn't to
them
.' The reason why is anybody's guess.

Some people believe that criminals have infiltrated Nigerian politics. Others, however, view corruption in Nigeria as a continuation of a traditional system of patronage that's been around for centuries. Traditionally in Nigeria power and money were controlled by Big Men who wielded huge influence by bestowing status and resources on a sycophantic ‘clientele'. Chiefs dished out gifts, food and titles, and projected their power through ostentation and conspicuous consumption: gold jewellery, sprawling palaces, a harem of wives and dozens of children; theirs was a life of leopard-printed, ivory-tusked, divinely sanctioned opulence. And bureaucrats served this power structure – they weren't independent actors working for whichever political system governed them. Politics and resource control were firmly intertwined.

This ancient mode of relations stubbornly persists to this day, resisting attempts by colonialism and Western-style politics to sweep it away. Added to the problem are Nigeria's size and ethnic heterogeneity. Judging by Transparency International's annual corruption surveys, the world's least corrupt nations tend to have small, homogeneous populations in which mutual trust is higher. But Nigeria's 300-odd ethnic groups were prodded by the British into an arranged marriage to form a ‘unified' nation state. Thrown into this bonfire were – among others – centralised feudalistic Muslim states, decentralised confederate-style Igbo kingdoms, and cattle-herding nomads, all of whom suddenly became ‘fellow citizens' in a political entity represented by an alien coat of arms.

In Europe, the nation state followed ethnic boundaries (established through centuries of war) more closely. But in Nigeria, this nation-state concept has flopped. We haven't yet dismantled centuries of extended family and ethnic bonds that have served us well through famine and drought. The system has its benefits: had my father not paid his younger siblings' school fees, my aunts and
uncles wouldn't have become lawyers, doctors and entrepreneurs. And my mother's support keeps the breadline at bay for certain members of her extended kin. But providing for his extended family put massive pressure on my father. Asking him for new clothes was always a tentative, dreaded task for me and my brothers and sister. After fielding constant money requests from his siblings and cousins, he gritted his teeth at having to bankroll our teenage growth spurts too.

For all its benefits, the social fabric of extended family doesn't wash well in a free-market economy; it hinders it badly, I think. Corruption and nepotism increase when pressure is placed on successful individuals to look after dozens of clinging family members. Many a Nigerian office is staffed with unqualified cousins and uncles who bring little innovation and creativity. Hard graft wins few prizes, and workers in government institutions will gladly raid the coffers partly to placate the upturned palms of demanding relatives. Bribery lubricates the cogs of everyday life: police won't take action without a small dash, and licences sometimes are not granted until money exchanges hands. All our civic institutions are irritatingly slow and ineffectual as a result.

The idea of civic institutions – a concept invented by Europe where family bonds are weaker – still mystifies certain Nigerians. We never needed them traditionally. People relied on extended family support, which was given on the assumption that the favour would be returned; a genetically based system of trust and reciprocity. Rarely did we extend such support systems beyond our kinship groups. As a result, trust and a sense of duty towards our ‘fellow Nigerians' hasn't fully settled in the collective psyche. Moral and ethical standards, so prevalent at village level, disappear on the national stage where many politicians feel no obligation to work for the common good.