TOO much is being done to promote the nothingness that stands for legislations. Sometimes we wonder if we need legislators in the first place. Neither the executive nor the judiciary is doing better.

Governments are doing everything to prove the people do not need them. Each government policy that does not connect with the people appears to be the one that achieves the aim of raising the people to more irrelevance. Where do people count in government policies? How do those in authority see the people? Do they think the people do not see through the schemes?

Now that is time for the budgets, the National Assembly is trying to convince Nigerians it is working. The latest debate is about cutting the salaries of the executive. Last year we were inundated with calls from the executive about slashing the budget of the National Assembly. The resolution of the matter was not public.

What the National Assembly intends to do in the 2012 is to retaliate by insisting the executive suffers a cut in its own budget.

“One thing is certain, we have reached a consensus between the executive and legislature that the cost of running the government is too high and that there will be a need to cut the cost of government and I think that, that will be the general trend in this particular budget. So, we are looking forward to seeing the budget and how much has been cut in terms of running the government,” Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information, said the Senate will react formally over a reported N50 billion cut of the Senate’s budget in 2012.

The most important thing in the budgets that we have had over the years is what those in power get. Once their issues are settled, the country is making progress. This attitude accounts for the state of the country.

Ordinarily, the debates about cutting the expenses of the National Assembly and other arms of government are premised on the expectation that the savings would be used for projects that would benefit the people. What are these projects? How have they been useful to Nigerians who are seeking opportunities to make a simple living?

What are the uses of budgets that do not improve the lives of Nigerians? Why is it possible to reduce the budget to an ordinary tangle between arms of the government over what each gets? Is the ordinary Nigerian part of the consideration in the 2012 budget?

Sometimes it is difficult to know which is more annoying, the comprehensive exclusion of the well-being of Nigerians or the concerted pretence at caring for people who are treated a little better than statistics in the minimal efforts at making the people matter.

It is still up to the people to do something about Nigeria. Those we have entrusted to look after Nigeria have elected to look after themselves, an assignment that is too engaging for them to bother about anything that is not related to their personal profit.

Nigeria cannot survive for too long under the supervision of those for who tending their greed has become the entire purpose of government.