But this is where Buhari has to learn from Xiaoping.
Xiaoping refused to demonise Chairman Mao, his
predecessor who had purged him from power and placed
him under house arrest after stripping him off his
privileges. Instead of bitterness, Xiaoping believed that
Mao’s “accomplishments must be considered before his
mistakes”. this part got me thinking I just pray it will work out as we are all thinking it should

Ugik:

#SaynotoXenophobia

why would leaders have dual or even multiple citizenship?
Is it as a getaway plan after destroying us? If not please tell me why

Guk:
Depressing!

How can he give such pieces of advice to an already prudent person like GMB whilst the person, GEJ, he pledges lifetime loyalty to was the most wasteful leader in Nigeria, someone who boasted of the number of Private Jets owned by Nigerians so much that we were the butt of jokes of the Kenyans. Why he never gave these pieces of advice to GEJ is obvious as he was heavily benefitting too!

Ben Murray Bruce does not have moral or professional standing to give anybody pieces of advice becasuse the state of NTA is an indication of his plundering of govt money

And there he was, Spotting a contradiction between being a progressive or a conservative. What a hypocrite!

DickDastardly:

No hate speech bro, the thing is that you naturally buried your head in the sand like the ostrish at the mere sight of the topic. Topic is reality 101 for you & buhari

Exactly, the man was neutral and realistic. Honestly people like these are good advisors, very neutral but realistic point. I couldn't even tell which party he belongs to and still can't tell. Every national issue if we approach it from a realistic and non-partisan stance will be easier and quickly dealt with. That's why even as a registered apc member i don't support the excessive excuse, warning and notifications by Buhari about the possibility of not meeting up with party/political manifestos and promises made during the campaigns, it is counter productive and makes us look like bunch of liars and jokers. Just saying, no disrespect intended to anyone.

gistabout:
Very funny

What is funny? DId you read tru this article at all or you are just commenting bc people are commenting?

SuperSuave:
I didn't read the thrash cos I know its full of hate speech. That man is a doubting Thomas, he still doesn't believe change is here, well he shall see it with his own eyes oniranu oshi

Ridiculous. You didn't read and you prejudged. You didn't read your books in school and you passed. People like you are never opened to other's opinion however good it may be. That is myopic!

DickDastardly:

No hate speech bro, the thing is that you naturally buried your head in the sand like the ostrish at the mere sight of the topic. Topic is reality 101 for you & buhari

active or passive, hate speech is still hate speech. he can't teach the General his job. Bruce in his own case should not be drunken with his new post, he'll be brewing a suicide potion for himself

Thank you Bruce for your advise, I wished you given the same advise to GEJ

espn:
I understand simple english.. in dis case we are dealing with in depth reasoning.. his comment is deeper dan d write up itself.. relate his comment to the heading of the thread! Add 1 + 1..thanks..kindly dont quote me back!

Yes sire, I swear I won't dare quote you back.

This is a bitter truth,un-biased in anyway.
I like this........

temitemi1:
Well said bruce. All the promises“. Free meal for students, salary for unemployment youths, 7000 naira every month for the poor citizens, ending boko haram, 40 per liter, 1naira to 1dollar,bla,bla,bla. All this promises are nothing but scam!!
GEJ my HEO! FAYOSE my ROLE MODEL!!
#BABAONECHANCE

why didn't he advice Jonathan to do all he asked of Buhari since he's pro Jonathan. And bro, when will u accept reality and drop ur national anthem. then again, its unemployed youths; guess it was a typo error from u

walozanga:


Maybe the circumstances ant dsame.

Care to explain the difference?

ideykwum:
Please, stop the fawning! It's becoming trite! What Buhari needs is healthy criticism that would defeat inertia and constantly put him on the edge, so that human failings or lethargy won't set in!!! He doesn't have a magic wand, granted, but part of integrity is keeping to promises made! You don't make promises and now disavow them because of changed circumstance! A good leader demonstrates a proactive understanding of the problems at hand, and doesn't start stuttering with excuses when he gets the mantle! We need to keep him on his toes, and demand accountability!

If GEJ had gotten rid of fawning praise singers, he could have achieved more! Let's not go down that road again!! May God grant Buhari the wisdom and direction required to fulfil his promises! Amin!

Mystery animal kills chickens(promise)
I vow to kill said animal (ideally believing its a Fox or snake)
I find out its a dragon(reality my big stick not gonna work)

in your Expert opinion do you think I should keep my promise(mind you I haven't been able to lay my hands on a Shrek,tank or at least a rocket launcher )

Technocracy:
Ben Bruce has obviously said so much in all sense of honesty with true patriotism to Nigeria and a perfect food for thought for our incoming president. What i dont understand is the emptiness in the minds and lips of these people who finds it difficult to come to terms with the rational reality and will always see an advice to Buhari as an attack on his person,the simple and had truth is that Buhari with the odds goin on for Buhari if he is not very careful he will fail most woefully and more so health is not perfectly on his side.

true words!

cescky:
I've always loved this guy since the days of NTA his entreperneurail drive, tenacity, faith etc nice write up too.
True role model of mine
For the bitter souls asking who he is he's a multimilinaire whose coys provides jobs for thousands across africa,yes he's at a level your bitterness won't allow yall see.

Yall say he didn't criticise jonathan...well its shows u pipo are not well versed in what ur talking about..clearly during the protest about subsidy removal during jonathans time, bruce has his own ideas about subsidy which wasn't in support of the then president and he explained his ideaology day and night on his station..google is you friend. In as much as this man benifited from pdp, you know a real one when you see one(he will do what his haert tell him) as seen from the letter above when he mentioned unapolegetically that he's a jonathan supporter.

Mr bruce is true role model of mine...even with apc led government if care is not taken this guy may end up rulling nigeria one day mark my words....real recognise real

The guy is a guru!I loved the revolution he brought to NTA and the success at silver bird!

wirinet:


Ben Bruce,s opening sentence contradicts the whole body of the article. If you are loyal and appreciative of president jonathan, it means you appreciate his style of governance. So why the advice? why not ask Buhari to continue with the way jonathan was ruling Nigeria, So that you can appreciate him too.

Since Jonathan is his kinsman and he had access to him, why did he not give Jonathan these advices anytime during the 6 yr presidency of president Goodluck?

Please leave President elect Buhari alone, he does not need the advice of PDP members on how to run a successful government.

Gbam.

eazisky:
Buhari has a lion heart... not a fish heart like GEJ

Buhari is not only a vegetable. He is not as strong an okro tree. Besides, he is comfirmed sickler. Very weak

Nice one from Bruce...am stuck between liking his statement and the fact that l was the one hundred and onethy-oneth person to hit the like button.

SuperSuave:
I didn't read the thrash cos I know its full of hate speech. That man is a doubting Thomas, he still doesn't believe change is here, well he shall see it with his own eyes oniranu oshi

I dont get you. If you havent read what he wrote so why trash him. 'Assumption is the mother of all eff ups"

Pls read. No atom of hate speach here

ithink7:
This is rubbish. Buhari is ready to work and Nigerians are ready to support.

One thing I deduced from this speech is that Bruce himself is afraid of this CHANGE. Maybe he has skeleton in his cupboard.

Interpreting the CHANGE slogan as mfm wealth transfer is an illusion he need to get over.

If you work for your money, no one is taking them from you but if you stole public fund, you must pay back every penny.

you wrote that you deduced from a well articulated and brilliant write-up like this That Ben Bruce is afraid of change cos maybe he has a skeleton in his cupboard.....Wow! I'm Flabbergasted...may I suggest you read the write-up again...Maybe you will deduced some vital points you missed in a hurry to comment like others

Hypocrite! You are loyal and appreciative and can not give GEJ this advice before he was kicked out??
And looking at what you said critically, are you telling Buhari not to probe GEJ's adminiration
This senator really loves Nigeria.

We need billions and Trillions of Naira in the hand of this out going president. Why Baba may not demonized anybody. I believe we need to follow the example of China by instituting capital punishment for anybody who has stole or who will steal from our common wealth.

Novaworld:
Now that Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) has been chosen by the Nigerian people, it is my duty as a patriotic Nigerian to help him succeed even though my candidate was President Goodluck Jonathan, a man to whom I will always be loyal and appreciative.


General Buhari is about to mount the saddle and I for one am in a very good position to tell him some home truths because as a senator-elect, I have a very fulfilling job awaiting me and I do not need a job or favours from Buhari so I do not have to play nice.


Looking at the personalities he has appointed to his transition council, I am wont to believe that General Buhari needs to expand his circle of friends and advisers.


As a military strategist, the president-elect must be familiar with the principle that the people you use in subduing an opponent are not necessarily the same persons you will need in rebuilding the territories you took. I may be using military terms, but I am sure General Buhari is aware that politics is war by other means and therefore many of the rules of war and peace apply to politics.


The General will be best served if he thinks of what is best for Nigeria rather than what is best for his party, the All Progressive Congress (APC), and its chieftains.


He must remember that in Nigeria’s subjective politics, it was his person that the people voted for not his party and he should therefore serve the people the dish they are angling for.


And what are the expectations of Nigerians from General Buhari? Definitely not business as usual.
The president-elect ran on a promise of change and while that change was not really defined by its chanters, Nigerians defined it as a change in their situation.


To borrow from the famously potent prayers of Mountain of Fire and Miracle members, the Nigerian masses defined change as a situation where wealth and power must change hands from the elite to the masses by fire by force and they see General Buhari as the enforcer angel that will bring about this change.


With this type of expectation, Buhari’s honeymoon period with Nigerians will not last very long if he does not take drastic steps to adjust Nigeria’s economy to the realities of falling oil prices and a dearth of buyers for the Bonny Light Sweet Crude.


To put things into perspective, when the United States started buying less and less of Nigeria’s oil, we looked to China as an alternative buyer of oil but it has since come to light that whereas America spent $101 billion on clean energy between 2012-13, China spent $125 billion within the same time frame.


The above data should alert Nigeria and other nations that look to China for oil markets to the fact that China is even ahead of the West in the search for alternative to fossil fuels as a source of energy.


Buhari may wish he did not win the 2015 elections when the reality of our economic situation sets in.
In his December 2014 Channels Television interview, Buhari said he was going to “stabilise the oil market”. The General will learn soon enough that today’s oil market is a buyers’ market.


And the General’s choices are limited because he cannot (unless he is extraordinarily brave and politically callous) do the obvious and sack civil servants. Yes, he will eventually have to reduce the over bloated federal civil service, but before he can do that, he has to build up political capital by reducing the overhead of the Executive and persuade the Legislature to follow suit.


[b]Austerity measures must start from Aso Rock. This means that luxurious multi car convoys must be reduced. The presidential air fleet has to go, by way of being auctioned off or sold to local airlines. Estacode allowances must be slashed and the president’s entourages should be lean while non-essential foreign travels should be banned.


The president-elect should not underestimate the big difference these small changes can make and their capacity to buy him enough credibility with the labour unions, the kind of credibility that will see them accepting cuts in the federal workforce and reduction in pay and entitlements.


A small change like flying commercial instead of by private jet saved Britain a whopping £200,000 when the thrifty British Prime Minister, David Cameron, flew to America to meet President Barack Obama on a regular BA flight.


Nigeria is in for very desperate times if we do not tighten our belts while our major foreign exchange earner is facing global challenges.
Russia, a nation that many will say is more prepared than Nigeria for the shocks occasioned by the drop in the price of oil devalued its currency by 11 per cent in just one day.


While Russia is taking these steps, the world is watching to see if Nigeria will continue to spend hundreds of billions annually sponsoring its elite on pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem.


I mean, no economist will get why a nation with over 60 per cent of its people living in poverty at the best of times, will spend almost 1 per cent of its annual budget sponsoring pilgrimages for its elite who can afford to go to the Holy Land on their own dime.


I for one do not get it. A pilgrimage is meant to be a sacrifice of a believer. How is a pilgrimage still a sacrifice when someone pays for you to go? The Nigerian government is sending people on holidays not pilgrimages!


I daresay that the money being spent by the Nigerian government to airlift pilgrims to both Holy Lands is enough to educate all the almajiri in Northern Nigeria. Wouldn’t God and humanity be better served if we looked after the less privileged in our midst?
General Buhari has his work cut out for him and he does not have time to be bitter about who said what, when and where. He must let go of any desire to pay any of his traducers back whether they be from the last 16 years or as far back as 1985.


Four years is only enough time to fix Nigeria. Any time spent on other ventures is time taken from this most important of assignments.
And let me say that General Buhari should not allow himself to be pigeon holed by people who dangle ideologies instead of realities. Yes, the APC may have styled itself as a progressive party, which in itself is a contradiction because Buhari is a conservative, but Buhari should not bother about that.

[/b]
Whether the philosophy is progressive or conservative or liberal or free market, he should go with what works because as Deng Xiaoping once noted: “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, if it catches mice it is a good cat.”
And it is fitting for me to end with a mention of Xiaoping. No other contemporary world leader, in my opinion, closely mirrors Buhari as does Xiaoping.


In 1966, Xiaoping was dethroned from his powerful party positions by loyalists of Chairman Mao as was Buhari in 1985 by loyalists of his Chief of Army staff.
Xiaoping suffered house arrest, loss of earned privileges and was consigned to political limbo for almost a decade as was Buhari.


But then Xiaoping bounced back into favour and became China’s leader in 1976 and thereafter jettisoned his life long belief in Mao’s Cultural Revolution and introduced the “one country, two systems” policy that allowed communism and capitalism to coexist in China. This is similar to Buhari’s conversion from an anti-democrat who believed power flowed from the barrel of a gun to a democrat who accepted democracy as the best form of governance and capitalism as the natural economic policy of a democracy.


But this is where Buhari has to learn from Xiaoping. Xiaoping refused to demonise Chairman Mao, his predecessor who had purged him from power and placed him under house arrest after stripping him off his privileges. Instead of bitterness, Xiaoping believed that Mao’s “accomplishments must be considered before his mistakes”.


This is how Buhari must treat his predecessors. He must not demonise everything that was done by previous administrations and mark those who served in those government as persona non grata. He must take the bitter with the sweet and make use of the best brains Nigeria has to offer, for as he said on December 31st, 1983, “This generation of Nigerians and indeed future generations have no other country than Nigeria”.

• Mr. Murray Bruce is a Senator-elect and CEO of Silverbird Entertainment Group




http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/it-doesn-t-matter-if-the-cat-is-white-or-black/208021/

People in glass houses should not throw stones, just wondering if Mr Bruce just came to these realisations because GEJ could have done with them.

BABA ONE CHANCE

BUHARI THE ONE CHANCE

Hmmmm....my future president.....nice point

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Ben bruce made a lot of sense, I also agree that the govt needs to stop sponsoring pilgrims

SuperSuave:
I didn't read the thrash cos I know its full of hate speech. That man is a doubting Thomas, he still doesn't believe change is here, well he shall see it with his own eyes oniranu oshi

I use to be like you but today I decided to differ. Only if you have read this piece you wouldn't have spewed this trash you just put up.
Believe me when I say that there is no atom of derogatory statement against the person of buhari. The man was civil with his choice of words unlike you who threw caution to the wind.
It's such a pity that you lack the art of reading and good interpretation and cognitive analysis of grammar and wordings when you can't even tell the difference between "may soon" and "will soon".
Grow up boo! I say grow up!!!

CountDracula:
Who is he sef? Bruce lee's cousin?

Hahahaha. But he's making sense though

[color=#990000][/color]. THAT APC WON ,DOES THAT MEAN PDP CAN'T MAKE MEANFUL CONTRIBUTION? THIS MAN IS SAYING SOMETHING SERIOUS AND PEOPLE ARE HERE DEMOSTRATING THEIR IGNORANCE OR DO YOU TINK THAT THIS COUNTRY WILL GET THE CHANGE IT SO MUCH NEED IF BOTH PARTIES DOESN'T JOIN HANDS? PLS APC, LET NOT YOUR HATE DESTROY YOU.

Dis cud ve be d best advise u cud ve given to outgoing Government, sinc u wil always loyal to him. GMB really salute ur advice, God is by his side