Lagos — The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri recently advocated a psychiatric examination of people who are standing for public office in order to determine their suitability or otherwise. Mrs. Waziri, expressing alarm at the primitive and filthy craving for wealth among the political elite - as evidenced by mind-boggling looting of the public treasury - declared her conviction that most political office holders were psychologically unfit to hold position of public responsibility.

"We have observed people amassing wealth to a point suggesting madness or some form of obsessive or compulsive psychiatric disorder," she lamented.

While, ordinarily, it would have been considered unfortunate that a nation embarked on corporate re-branding should have such a public statement coming from the head of its anti-graft agency, there is hardly any doubt, nevertheless, that something fundamental has gone wrong about Nigeria's political class.

Take our present President, Alhaji Umaru Yar'Adua, for example. For long, Nigerians had ascribed the absence of good governance in the country to its endless parade of presidents or heads of state with no strong formal exposure to academics. Nigeria's sitting President today is not just a graduate and ex-don, he belonged, in his younger days, to the ideological camp of the ascetic pro-masses Mallam Aminu Kanos of the North. Nigerians can, therefore, hardly believe that this is the same Comrade Umaru Yar'Adua that has occupied the Presidential Villa since May 2007. Consider, as one example, the offensively glamorous marriage ceremonies of his daughters to state governors. Also, take his publicity-craving wife, whose face is a feasting delight of television cameras and magazine covers. What is happening to President Yar'Adua?

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo furnishes another example of the malady of leadership in Nigeria. After surviving the Abacha terror machine and over three years in prison, General Obasanjo regained his freedom by an unconditional presidential pardon. Fresh from his traumatic experience, the general and ex-military head of state pronounced the late Gen. Abacha insane; and demanded that thenceforth leaders should be subjected to a prior psychiatric test. Obasanjo indeed was an eminent citizen of the continent and the world, who had run seriously, during the Babangida regime, for the office of the United Nations Secretary-General. Yet, this experienced statesman who had seen it all left a record, from 1999 to 2007, of grave disappointment to all his admirers. He blew his chance, ruined his reputation and left the country on the verge of collapse. Worst of all, he put up a titanic struggle to cling to office indefinitely as life president, through his ill-advised, illegitimate third term bid which pitted him against his Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and the whole country.

What is it in governance that tends to turn decent men into villains in this country? What plants gargantuan greed into their hearts and causes them to throw every virtue to the winds?

Mrs. Waziri tries to distinguish between two types of theft - one, which may be morally defensible, is stealing in order to survive; and the other is a manifestation of kleptomania - an obsessive, uncontrollable impulse to steal what is not needed. Nigeria is flooded with examples of such leaders. When a man in his late 50s or 60s or even 70s steals from the public treasury over N17 billion, as happened, for example, in the case of one ex-Police chief recently, one wonders what rational motive exists for such conduct. What does he need all that money for? And if he desires to be so wealthy, why loot the public treasury for it, thereby depriving millions of poor citizens good governance, instead of toiling honestly to satisfy his taste? In such cases, it may be justly said that only a thin line, indeed, separates sanity from its opposite.

Mrs. Waziri may have spoken the bitter truth, though very embarrassing from a top public official. Did Chief Jim Nwobodo, one-time Governor of old Anambra State, on emerging from prison, not admonish political leaders to routinely visit Nigerian prisons in order to maintain a proper sense of bearing? And did the then Minister of Works and Transport, Mrs. Deziani Allison Madueke, not once shed tears openly when, on her first inspection of project sites, she saw she deplorable state of the Sagamu-Benin Expressway and the agony of motorists and passengers on that busy route? Does Mrs. Allison Madueke still care for the ordinary citizens, or has she been sucked into the cult of callousness that swallows up our leaders?

Mrs. Waziri's lamentations and call for a psychiatric examination of office seekers are unnecessary, however. Her present office as head of the EFCC gives her an excellent leverage to compel public office holders to govern with probity and accountability. All she really needs to do is enforce the existing laws by ensuring that corrupt public officers are brought to justice and punished as a deterrent to others. The EFCC Act grants the Commission sweeping powers to achieve this; in fact, the present powers of the Commission are awesome. Strict law-enforcement without respect to persons - not pious pontification - is the only effective route to deterring would-be criminals, especially where impunity has taken hold of the society as a privilege of the powerful.

Then, psychiatric tests for public-office seekers will be superfluous.