Adversity can cause opacity. Travails and challenges can becloud a people’s sense of reasoning and appreciation, and in the process lead them into ignoring basic variables that could reveal the stark realities of certain developments. In the faceof frustrationpeopleoften react the way they feel, flow with the tide of complaints and subsequently fall prey to mischief makers.

There is no gainsaying that there is hardship in the land foisted by the harsh economic environment, resulting largely from our indiscriminate indulgences and worsened by the global economic downturn. At once, everything seem to be going from bad to worse; and being seriously hit by the pressure of all these,emotions rise, tempers flare andanyone in sight becomes the culprit.

Unfortunately, as in this case, the sitting government takes the flak. It promised change and change in deed has come in the early days, but not in the glamorous pack it was expected. The change seems to come with pain, misery and in some cases wailing and gnashing of teeth. Exasperated, the government seeks to absolve itself from blame, pointing accusing fingers at the years of the locusts.

Indeed, discerning persons know and would readily agree that what is going on now could not have been as a result of ten months of alleged incapacity, but a result of cumulative recklessness that had been the lot of the past. It is indeed the chicken coming home to roost after an adventureover the years with a reckless government, and a complacent and conniving people.

It is the effect of politicising the economy and using the economy for politics. It is the result of an avowed pursuit of the stomach infrastructure project which successive governments elevated to the state of an art. It is a result of promoting vested interests over protecting the common patrimony. It is a crime which everybody is guilty, either directly or vicariously.

Unfortunately, the exhibition that led to this sorry pass is still on – playing politics with everything and spewing emotions and sentiments on every act. Shadow-chasing has become a way of life among the Nigerian masses whose sense of judgment is teleguided by politicians, confused by the elite, beclouded by their misery and given exaggerated impetus by the media. Reason and reasoning are now very scarce commodities as interests, intrigues and mischief mount the grandstand.

The 2016 Budget for instance, has been embroiled in controversy from the outset. It was primed to be, to achieve certain predetermined aims. It was pushed into controversy deliberately for the sake of interests and intrigues. It was a child born into dirty politics and bureaucratic chicanery; not that it was in itself dirty. The controversy seems contrived; a product of mischievous scheming issuing from the bad blood between the two major political parties on the one hand, and the resultant war of attrition between the legislature and the executive on the other. Consequently, thebudget became the theatre where the supremacy contest would either be resolved or bloodied.

Why the budget? It is the economic policy tool of government. It is the one instrument that definesthe policy direction of an administration in concrete terms, the success or otherwise of its programmes. It affects the people directly. If the budget is threatened, not just the government but the people will be tormented. And so it has been!

From when it started, discerning minds saw the direction of the game. A document that was publicly laid at the National Assembly (NASS) by the President was declared missing a few weeks later. It was missing in the custody of the NASS, not the Executive; but then when controversy erupted, the narrative was divergent; not focused on who should have taken custody of the instrument and why it“disappeared” without knowledge. That expectation was eclipsed when another alarm was raised that it has reappeared in a different form; even though it is obvious the document was not a spirit – to have disappeared and reappeared without human knowledge.

It is worthy of note here that it was in the Senate that the alarm was raised. The House of Representatives, at the time, maintained that it was unaware of any missing budget. Assuming it was in deed missing, how did it reappear in the National Assembly? Given the number of legislators in both chambers of the National Assembly, the volume of the document must have been large and must have come in huge conveyances; but up till now not many have bothered to ask how the documents came, who brought them, who received and who distributed them to legislators.

The impression it leaves, going by the din that accompanied the development, is that the National Assembly is so porous that things could just disappear and reappear without notice; and that the legislators are so gullible they would receive and work on any document available, without minding the source.

And when the issue of “errors, omissions and paddings” became a sing song, a good number of people flowed with the din, and the executive became the whipping boy for lack of capacity to deliver on its first major assignment. In climes where citizens are deeply interested in the affairs of their country, questions would have been raised as to the real nature of the errors, the extent of padding and the level of inconsistencies; but even if they were raised at all by an insignificant but rational number, their effort to seek answers must have been drowned in what now looks like emotional outburstsand mischievous chants of naysayers.

Subsequently, whenever there are issues that bother on the inability of the legislators to deliver on time, the response became routine – that they are having “serious challenges” because the budget was riddled with errors, omissions and inconsistencies. This was further given impetus when some ministers distanced themselves from proposals that had to do with their ministries. A seal was given when the President himself said bureaucrats replaced the original document with something else.

Rather than question how the controversial document got into the chambers of the National Assembly and became an official material used for deliberations by the legislators, the later rejections and protests by agents of the Executive armbecame evidence to strengthen the claim that abadly packaged budget was dumped on the NASS.The cries by the Executive that what is before the NASS is not actually what was intendeddid not cut any ice among the band of “crucify-them” choristers.

When some ministers rejected some proposals on the grounds that what is before NASS is different from what they submitted, nobody insisted on finding out exactly where things went wrong - whether it was done by the legislators or the ubiquitous budget mafia. It could have been any or both; after all this has been said to be the trend over the years. It is variously said that the relationship between the NASS and the budget mafia is old as democracy in Nigeria. It failedthis time because the government foreclosed lobbying of NASS by the MDAs.

With the hilarious frenzy generated by NASS over “errors, omissions and paddings” up till March 6 when they were through with the details, one would have expected a significant difference in the overall figure between what was presented by the Executive and what eventually was passed by NASS. The N17 billion difference was said to be a 10% cut across MDAs. Does it mean there were uniform “errors, omissions and paddings” across all MDAs?

House of Representatives Appropriation Committee Chairman, Abdulmumin Jibrin had said the Executive should be “grateful” to the NASS because the envelope sumsit proposed have been left largely intact; which means apart from the movement of figures within MDAs, which may have been done with vested interests in mind (particularly constituency projects) there is no significant difference between what was sent and what was passed eventually.

The question now would be: given all the chants about “errors, omissions and paddings” – what has really changed in the said controversial budget and the one passed (without the details) by the National Assembly?

The passed Appropriation Bill (without details) was sent to the President on March 23, 2016, for assent; and NASS claims there was nothing wrong with that, after all President Obasanjo in his days used to sign a blank cheque. In the same breath they admitted that President Yar’Adua after him, used to insist on the details before signing. So why did they continue with a rejected tradition?

They claim the delay in passing the budget was due to the “errors, omissions and paddings” which they were trying to correct and put in proper perspective; but even after the submission of reports by all the committees, the harmonisation by the two chambers and the eventual passing of the Appropriation Bill by the Senate, the same reasons were still being peddled as being responsible for not submitting the details alongside the highlights. It does not occur to most commentators that it took the legislators almost four months “day and night” to correct “errors, omissions and paddings” in a document that took just about five months to prepare.

The legislators, individually and collectively, have continued to insist that they have a constitutional right to alter and reallocate provisions which, in their estimation, would benefit the people much more; so if that is as sacrosanct as expressed why did they not quietly do that when the Executive presented the proposals to them, no matter how defective. Why did they have to raise such commotion in order to exercise a profound constitutional responsibility!

Disturbingly, these obvious contradictions in the actions and omissions of the National Assembly failed to elicit appropriate queries from the public space because intrigues and primordial interests, including the hate mentality, overwhelmed a dispassionate sense of reasoning and fair judgment.

The deduction here is that the uproar rather than being altruistic could have been a protest against the disruption of the status-quo by the Executive, a weapon of political bargaining and a cover for planned manipulation of allocations to serve primordial interests.

•Ibanga, a communication analyst, lives in Abuja. Photo shows Budget Minister Udo Udoma.

Update news