Lagos — Nigerians welcomed the democratic dispensation which was revived in 1999 after an extended retrogressive and oppressive military dictatorship.

Our people had become disillusioned with the failed promises of coup plotters as they endured an unending sliding rape of their standard of living and a direct frontal attack on their dignity.

Most Nigerians timidly watched with mouths agape as erstwhile ordinary Nigerians in military gear and their cohorts and apologists quickly swelled the ranks of the noveau riche as the middle class and intelligentsia were gradually emasculated by the military's obtuse policies which encouraged idleness and also depleted the purchasing power of the working class.

The majority of our citizens feared for their lives, and were too timid to question the irresponsible brigandage of which they were victims!

The advent of Obasanjo's civilian regime elicited much hope for an improved lifestyle and the expectations of the 'dividends of democracy' became a national slogan. Regrettably, after nine years, most Nigerians outside the preferred sectors of banking, petroleum and telecoms assert curiously that they are worse off materially today, than they were in 1999!

Indeed, United Nations' statistics on World Poverty Ratings have confirmed this reality with the consistently dwindling ranking of our country amongst the world's poorest nations, even at a time when our export earnings continue to rise phenomenally beyond our wildest expectations!

It has become sadly clear that our military dictatorships did not have a monopoly of shallow intellectual depth and self-interest in government!

The expectation that the presence of freely elected National and State Legislative Assemblies would check the excesses and philandering of the Executive arms of government has obviously been misplaced.

However, critics observe that the bulk of the emerging civil political class were bedmates and surrogates of the 'outgoing' self-serving military dictatorship. Indeed, some would say that the only positive contribution of the National Assembly to the growth and stability of our nation was the principled stand under the patriotic leadership of Ken Nnamani against tenure elongation by Obasanjo!

Some critics maintain that we could not expect any better life for the struggling masses as the motivation for political inclusion is self enrichment for all but a handful of the elected/selected legislators.

Thus, in spite of a steadily depressive economy, I do not recall any robust legislative debate at anytime on how our industries can be revived, or how the increasing level of unemployment can be halted or how inflation and rapidly rising food prices can be stemmed, or how, indeed, the dwindling income values of workers can be reversed!

So long as ministries and parastals continue to pay billions of Naira to legislators to carry out oversight functions, and so long as legislators continue to collect unconstitutional kickbacks for constituency projects which are never implemented and so long as the legislature budgets contain much extra fat for subsequent sharing and so long as no one will audit the income and expenditure patterns of the Federal and State Assembly members, who cares what the Executive arms of government do with the rest of the money?

Indeed, so long as the legislature's padded budgets are fully allocated and paid, the economy can continue to retrogress and our people can continue to wallow in poverty for all they care!

Yar'Adua's 2008 federal budget is a case in point. In spite of the fact that the budget was submitted to the National Assembly last year, wranglings between the Legislature and the Executive with regard to bloated and unsubstantiated allocations endured until the end of March, thereby, violating the spirit of a 12 month budget and incurring the potential collateral damage of non-implementation, unspent budgets and corrupt embezzlement of state funds in December 2008!

In an article in this column (see "2008 Budget, More Questions than Answers" 21/04/2008), I sighted notable flaws in the proposed budget, and why the budget will lead to unmitigated failure by year end.

I noted that: "It is not the quantum of allocation that is the issue, but the manner in which the money is spent and the framework within which the money is spent. A budget which is operated within a defective monetary and economic blueprint will achieve the wrong results. We have a faulty monetary framework.

The National Assembly is totally oblivious of the disastrous impact of monthly sharing of substituted naira for our distributable export dollar revenue; commercial lending rates hovering around the industrially unfriendly rates of around 20%, our ever increasing domestic pump price of fuel in the face of vastly improved and still rising external dollar reserves are all the results of naira substitution for our dollar earnings.

This same framework ensures that we made interest payments of over N372bn to mainly the banks in return for money that CBN had earlier placed in their care in 2007; even though the money so borrowed by CBN and the Debt Management Office (DMO) are simply sterilized or stored in vaults to accumulate dust rather than for infrastructural development!"

Obviously, above is all grammar to the National Assembly so long as each legislator's chop-chop expectations have been provided for in the budget!

But, we all know that a fool and his money are soon parted; so, it is for a nation state which continues to accumulate useless and unnecessary debt burdens while paying astronomical rates of interest for monies borrowed and then kept idle in vaults!

Indeed, such domestic debts have more than doubled to N2200bn in the last four years and, yet, no one can point a finger at any project or benefit conferred by such high borrowings on the Nigerian people; but the banks and other speculative investors, both foreign and local, go home smiling for having a fool as a trading partner.

Of course, only a fool will borrow his own money back from a bank at a cost higher than what the bank is paying him for keeping the same funds. There is no sectoral allocation (including votes for vital infrastructural development) in Yar'Adua's 2008 budget that is higher than the estimated N500-600bn we will pay as interest charges for such useless loans in 2008!

Only a fool will also discountenance and endorse a 20% interest payment on otherwise acclaimed soft loans.

In The Guardian edition of 22/5/05, pg 112, the Director General of the DMO, one Abraham Nwankwo, indicated that "...84% of the Nation's $3.7billion external debt is accounted for by loans from concessionary sources like the World Bank, African Development Bank and IFAD.

These are loans obtained at very low charges and concomitant charges of 0.5%. These loans are used for poverty alleviation programs in education, health and agricultural sectors".

Nothing wrong with this on the surface, but, surprisingly, President Yar'Adua has indicated interest provision of about $600m (i.e. about 20% of principal) for this loan of $3.7bn in his 2008 budget!

This is outrageous and out of sync with the traditional low cost for such loans, and CBN's inexplicable 'soft deposit' of $7bn in 14 Nigerian banks that it concurretly borrows from.

Nonetheless, the National Assembly, in its self-serving wisdom, has ignored this faux pas as they grumble and rumble over the disbursement of the bloated budget already assented to by Yar'Adua on threat of impeachment.

SAVE THE NAIRA, SAVE NIGERIANS!