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

Desric:
So you are this intelligent yet you didn't bother to advice your brother and "godfather" of high esteem to you and you were just looking at him after he spent five whole years living exactly the opposite of what you are prescribing for the incoming administration; need I inform you that you missed to also advice GMB to also put his wife on proper check to avoid the mistake your brother made during his time.

shinel:

I have started smelling that CHANGE also it's so interesting!

Baba is now elected, I now see electricity 2hours a day including 1day off instead of the 7 to 8hours before.

Baba is now elected, I bought fuel in the black market yesterday after almost a decade experience of things like this.

CHANGE is truly here!! I will keep watching in Tobago...

Vicotex:
smh, Na ao all of us take enter ONCHANCE

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

Felvet:
Hian! Bros, the guy said Nigerian politicians, is GEJ not a politician? You really hate the man.

Billyonaire:
I believe in my lifetime, I have seen one senator, I have seen one principled Nigerian, and I have seen someone as daring as myself, that person is Ben Bruce. I do not know why he wrote this, because it is a manual for Buhari's success if he follows it religiously. I have learnt something there; That it is not necessarily the soldiers you use in defeating your opponents in a war that you must use to cement the victory and develop the nation. Buhari must expand his net beyond APC and search for the best brains, because he will be Nigeria President, not APC President. I hope #BabaoneChance can read, then he should read this and learn.

ajalaolanr:
Ben bruce, you waited 6 years to write this bullshit because you are looking for relevance.

All the truth and nation building suggestions of yours would have made utmost sense were you to have written this 3-4 years ago..alas you also enjoyed from the rot that characterized the Gej govt.

Now you want to play holy.

Ferk you!!

Wolexy1212:
Mr Bruce, I'm surprised you hid all these from your clueless candidate for 6yrs. We don't need your advice sir.

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.


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.


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/

efilefun:
Another hater... So Jonathan would have been the best, so he could continue leading the country into pit with his power drunk wife who had turned invisible since they were slapped at the polls... Well was this man ever investigated cuz for a GM of NTA to own a private station means a lot had been done overnight.... Fingers crossed

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

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

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

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.





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

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.


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.


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/

ideykwum:
You see why you're dull and insipid? You don't read...You don't comprehend...You don't analyse...Yet you comment and argue blindly! Which hate speech are you talking about? Okay Einstein, define "hate speech"! Olodo rapata!

Ngasky:
The multiple citizenship destroyer of NTA has spoken.
APC should make sure nobody with more than one citizenship (NIGERIAN) should be given any role not even as a messenger in government parastatal

bjdon:


A very nice write up. My fear for the incoming administration is that Buhari talked like a dictator during the campaign. 'I will do this, I will jail this....' but now he'll meet the reality of the limits of a president in a democratic setting.

If we take the National assembly for example, Buhari has no control over them whatsoever, consequently if they decide to keep their mega wage packages there's nothing he can do. How will his govt then look when he starts to impose austerity on ordinary Nigerians while the Senators and Reps continue to feed fat?

At no point during the campaign did any of the candidates address the issue of the falling oil prices and the impact that is going to have on the economy. This is the problem with trivial campaigns. The expectation level of the people has been raised to an imposable level, Buhari and the APC know this which is why they have started trying to manage expectations, but will the voters listen? I think not, they have voted for 'change' and want to see 'change' quickly. I wish Buhari lots of luck. He's surely going to need it.

mbulela:

Don't mind the hypocrites.
As much as I want Buhari to sell off the planes in the fleet, I also want Ben Bruce to refuse to collect over 40 million quarterly for doing what amounts to exchanging banter with co-travellers while seating in cushy seats in Abuja.

iamrealdeji:
Ben Bruce is right,Nigerians have hung a chain made of thorns around Buhari's neck,it will hurt his neck and if he removes it,he's in soup,he's probably the most trusted and celebrated president-elect and HE MUST NOT DISSAPOINT in anyway,the young,old,literates,illiterates look up to him,he himself have made numerous promises that would be difficult to execute,he must not fail in anyway,people expect more from him than they expected from Abiola because even if Abiola failed them then(which he would) they'd forgive him because he was a great philanthropist,but people see Buhari as a Messiah that needs that can change this country and have trust in him that everything is possible due to the way he has talked about everything like it's easy in his campaigns,if he loves himself,he should keep much of his promises,he can't keep all,and the only way to keep his promises is to turn his back against those that got him to that seat,because they're the main problem of this country

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

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.