Lagos right now is possessed with a sort of madness, daily life is a frenzy.

The heat seems more oppressive than usual, the traffic more unbearable, the crowds more on edge, and the difficulties of just getting by from one day to the next sometimes seem insurmountable.

As a foreigner here I live a life of relative luxury, but the anguish of these troubled times escapes no-one.

For a start, here in one of the world's biggest oil-producing countries, there's a crippling fuel shortage.

The streets are jammed with queues of desperate drivers, prepared to wait for days sometimes just to fill up their tanks.

Driving past a petrol station can be unforgettable experience.

Armed soldiers, stationed there to keep the peace amongst the irate drivers, approach your car and bang ferociously on the bonnet to get you to move out of the traffic jam - which of course you can't.

Fights break out every few minutes with three or four drivers who just can't take it any more screaming at each other at full volume and gesticulating wildly.

And every now and then someone runs across in front of you carrying their petrol tanks on their heads - in the hope that this is a shortcut to the pump.

I usually sit in my car, turn on some soothing music and let the sweat drip down my face as I try to delude myself that I am watching movie.

If the fuel crisis had been going on for a week, or even a month, it might be acceptable - at least to those used to the vagaries of life in Nigeria.

But it hasn't - it's been going on for more than a year.

It all started when the government decided to cut back on fuel imports last year, in what appeared to be an attempt to make Nigeria more self reliant.

Nigeria should be able to provide itself with fuel, the logic went, so stop the imports.

Someone in government seems to have ignored the fact that Nigeria is not refining nearly enough fuel to keep things ticking over because its refineries are in a state of near collapse.

It's unlikely that they government didn't realise this key fact - so one can only conclude that they don't really care.

Apart from bringing chaos to the streets the result of the fuel crisis is that transport prices have rocketed, and food prices too. Plenty of small business have gone under, and many people can't get to work.

There's no end in sight. Sometime in desperation I secretly hope the fuel will completely run out, just for a few days, so that at least there will be peace.

But, of course that wouldn't solve anything, and besides fuel is only part of the problem.

It's a staggering fact that most residents of Lagos - a city of 7 million people, a place with a flourishing stock exchange and sky scrapers, nowadays come home to find they have no electricity.

That means no running water because there's no water pump, no light, no air conditioning or fans, no nothing.

Even if you're rich enough to have a generator you can't run it unless you can find diesel to buy - and that means back to the fuel queues.

I'm told unanimously that it never used to be like this. Three of four years ago middle-income families had television sets, fridges and other electrical gadgets which they used.

But last week a friend admitted he had long since given up on all his household appliances. There's no point in repairing them when they break down, he told me, because there's no electricity to use them anyway.

So he's planning to sell his air conditioners. That means he and his family sometimes sleep outside their house on the pavement at night to keep cool.

It's a humiliating experience for a man who puts on a suit and tie to go to work, in a country which used to be known as the Giant of Africa.

What has happened to Nigeria? Why has a country with such fantastic natural resources gone down this road? That's the question everyone here asks each other every day.

The answer is quite simple. No-one gives a damn. The country has rulers instead of leaders - they set the example; and in a bid to survive the system we all stupidly follow, and sink lower.

In the traffic this morning, the drivers myself included did what we had to get by.

I drove up the wrong side of the road with everyone else, and along the verge to try to weedle my way through the jam caused by the petrol queues, causing more havoc as I went. I would never do this back home, so why was I doing it here I wondered?

Especially when I found myself stuck in a partly self-created bird's nest of cars for 20 minutes unable to move.

I sighed hopelessly. Then the dreaded noise came from the distance behind me - the siren of a military convoy carrying a bigwig to work.

We all knew what this meant, because these cars usually plough their way through traffic jams by sending armed soldiers running in front of them, whipping drivers who don't get out of the way.

I wedged my car as far against the side of the road as I could, and the convoy screamed past.