Bashing Jonathan Won’t Move Nigeria Forward – Ben Bruce Writes Touching Article

Senator Ben Murray-Bruce has written a touching article on why Nigerians need to look forward.

I am former President Goodluck Jonathan’s senator. He is my constituent in the Bayelsa East senatorial zone that I represent in the Senate of the National Assembly and I am sufficiently aware of what he did and did not do while he was president of Nigeria. Former President Jonathan achieved a lot of things for Nigeria during his term and I think it is a revision of history for anyone or institution to propagate the narrative that he set Nigeria back. How could that be the case when under him Nigeria became the leading economy in Africa and our average life expectancy grew from 47 years to 51.7 years which represents the single largest increase in our annals? Thankfully, these records, especially the one for the increase in life expectancy come from no less a body than the United Nations, so no one can say that Jonathan manipulated these records.

It is not that I have set out to defend Jonathan in this piece, but I think someone has to be responsible enough to say that Jonathan is out of the picture and to continue to blame him and his administration for Nigeria’s current problems betrays a defeatist mentality by those who are engaging in that pastime. This ‘blame it all on Jonathan’ song can sustain those who sing it in the short term, but eventually it will work in Jonathan’s favour. Those in the frontline of the anti-Jonathan chorus are more responsible than anybody else for keeping Jonathan in the consciousness of Nigerians which cannot be good for the present administration.

When you are out of political office, your greatest need shifts from the need to be seen as performing to the need for relevance. It is the government in power that needs to perform. Everybody else only needs to be relevant. And Jonathan’s enemies are making him relevant.

In fact, by blaming Jonathan for all of Nigeria’s problems, his enemies make him the main issue in Nigerian politics which is good for him and not for them.

Let me use an analogy here. In the 80s, reggae music was at the zenith of its popularity and all over the world, from the Caribbean, to Europe to Africa, reggae musicians were singing mostly one song. All their songs centred around freeing Nelson Mandela. However, when Mandela was unexpectedly released in 1991, the popularity of reggae music nosedived because reggae musicians had lost their number one source of inspiration! So, while Mandela went on to become the most relevant black man of his lifetime, those that sang about his release gradually faded away into obscurity.

Are we seeing a replay of this scenario in Nigeria? Instead of all this Jonathan bashing, should we not be more concerned about the clear and present dangers facing this nation?

For instance, Nigeria has the fastest growing population in the world. While the population of Europe is projected to shrink by 2050, Nigeria’s population is expected to surpass that of the United States and by 2100 it is projected that we will rival China’s population. Yet, as the population of Nigeria is exploding right before our eyes, some people are talking about dismantling the Jonathan era policies that were actually preparing us for the dramatic increase in our population without themselves coming up with alternative solutions. The new song is to jettison the National Conference report which made progressive suggestions on how to make our economy and polity less dependent on oil which is a diminishing resource.

The agricultural policies of Akinwumi Adesina while he was minister of agriculture are being pooh poohed for political reasons instead of celebrating and continuing with them. The man led changes that reduced our food import bill by over $4 billion and increased our ability to feed ourselves yet we do not want to recognise that because it is a fruit from the Jonathan tree.

The Jonathan administration weeded out 50,000 ghost workers from the federal civil service through the introduction and strict compliance with the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), yet instead of applauding Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for this feat, we are instead bailing out states that cannot pay workers’ salaries precisely because many of those workers are ghost workers! Tell me who will feed us in 2050 when we have more mouths to feed than the entire populations of those countries to whom we would be looking for help? Jonathan was building schools for Almajiris and there are those insulting him for that and calling it a misplaced priority forgetting that if we do not educate the 10 million out-of-school children that the United Nations estimate exists in Northern Nigeria, a day will come when the population of out-of-school Nigerian children will be more than in-school children and the resultant effect on our national security will be nothing short of catastrophe!

Nigeria’s politics has to mature. We have to realise that once elections are over, we must all accept the outcome and learn to work with each other. It is a big, big misconception that you have to like people to work with them or to build upon what they started. If man had kept reinventing the wheel, we would never have invented the plane. Every generation must build upon where the previous generation stopped from. That is the story of human progress since the fall of man in Eden to the Internet age of today. If Alexander Graham Bell did not invent the telephone, we would not have the Internet today. If we had complained about the complication associated with the land line and jettisoned the idea of a telephone, we would not have made progress in telephony to the point where we have mobile phones! If every new administration keeps starting from the scratch and wastes its honeymoon period demonising its predecessor, both Nigeria and the administration may find it difficult to fulfil their potential.

Enough of this rear view mirror focus we have been regaled with these past few months. It is time to man up and take responsibility for the way things are and take action to make progress. Thankfully, not everyone has been caught up in the ‘blame it all on Jonathan’ frenzy. Of all the present office holders, the only person that seems to have come to grips with the economic reality Nigeria finds itself in is the current Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Godwin Emefiele. His idea of introducing home grown pragmatic policies to curtail what we spend our foreign exchange on is the only saving grace that has kept the naira at the level it is in.

If not for Emefiele’s decision to stop the sale of foreign exchange for the importation of 40 items, we would have been experiencing perhaps a rate of 500 to $1. By this action, Emefiele has shut out those who previously wasted our foreign exchange importing luxury or non-essential commodities such as toothpicks, glass and glassware, kitchen utensils, tables, textiles, woven fabrics, clothes, plastic and rubber products, soap and cosmetic, tomatoes/tomato paste, margarine, palm kernel/palm oil products/vegetable oil, meat and processed meat products, vegetable and processed vegetable products, poultry — chicken, eggs, turkey — private airplanes/jet and Indian incense. Can you imagine that the CBN had been subsidising the importation of toothpicks, wheel barrows and palm oil which are products that we can conveniently produce in Nigeria? Are we going to die if we do not import Indian incense? What is that even used for in the first place? Or that at a time Nigeria had become a net exporter of cement we were still allowing people to import cement with our scarce foreign exchange?

We have millions of youths looking for jobs yet we were allowing people import chicken and eggs instead of financing our small and medium scale enterprises to go into such ventures which will meet our needs while providing jobs for our youths. These are the types of things that deserve our attention and I thank God Nigeria has people like Emefiele who has not allowed himself to be distracted by all the Jonathan bashing such that he is providing a steady hand at a time when other hands are unsteady. Hopefully, those engaged in this conduct will come back to reality and stop their blame-shifting dance. If there is ever any man to blame for your present condition, it is never the man that sat in the seat you now seat on. It is always the man in the mirror!

My name is Ben Murray Bruce and I just want to make commonsense

Mukoro is Spain Presidential Candidate: You can make it anywhere.

The reason Naomi and her Husband left her country for a foreign one was because there was famine in the land, so they expected they would do well in a foreign land that apparently was flowing with ‘milk and honey’ but you know the rest of the story, after some years Naomi returned back to her home land empty handed after losing everything she went with including her husband. This story is a few thousand years old yet many a times we don’t seem to get the wisdom from that lesson – YOU CAN MAKE IT ANYWHERE.

‘Make money anywhere’ is a book written by Helen Mukoro, it makes it clear that you can make the money you want to make anywhere you are, there are many poor people in America or Abuja yet we have people living large in some states I need not mention. Ofcourse this article is not to talk about Helen Mukoro’s book but the author, Her quest and success in a foreign land to clinching the Presidential ticket in Spain even as a Nigerian who grew up in Sapele makes it further clear that YOU CAN BE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE ANYWHERE.

Helen Mukoro attended Saint Ita's Girls College. Sapele, Delta State. Elected by the College Administration as the Assistant Prep Prefect. She holds a Degree in Social Education, Professional Master degree in Criminology. Superior Professional Certificate in Criminal Law, Postgraduate Certificate in Tax and Labour Management, a Postgraduate Certificate in Forensic Psychology, a Postgraduate Certificate in Immigration and Domestic Violence, as well as a Diploma Certificate in Agriculture (College of Agriculture, Anwai, Delta State, Nigeria).

She once contested for the seat of Mayor of Denia - Spain on May 24, 2015 and is now a Presidential aspirant for the Presidency of Spain, December, 2015 for the opposition political party UNION DE TODOS.

Even in a foreign land her quest to move to the top was not tamed, she probably knows that anywhere she can place her foot on is hers like an inheritance hence she did not limit her drive to excel and be head. That means some of the excuses we give for not being successful with our dreams, excuses like the family we came from, our country, the economic climate, Government’s attitude to upcoming entrepreneurs et al simply holds no water.

Ofcourse she prepared herself (obvious from her qualifications above), she didn’t just wish it and expect it to fall on her laps, she risked it, took steps to prepare herself and ventured into it. So forget that place, that bank account statement of yours, that family, that past or whatever because the truth is – YOU CAN BE WHATEVER YOU WANT, ANYWHERE YOU WANT.

Why all the Noise about President Buhari's appointments?

There must be something I am not getting, I mean the South-South Region of Nigeria almost since Independence clamored  for an Indigenous President because we felt we were under developed as against what we deserve owing to our contibutions to national wealth form oil, in the last five years we have been enjoying answers to that prayer and I am yet to get the eye googles to help me see the expected developments.

I said it all along; to get what you are due you don't need the leader to be from your town, all you need is a good leader. So I wonder why everyday since the last political appointments were made we hear different groups still complaining about not getting their kinsmen in positions.

Apart from indicating expectations of a partial play, it also underlines the fact that we are not one, it shows clearly that we are different groups forced to live together because if we consider ourselves to be one, when a Calabar man is made SGF the Fulani man should see him as a Nigerian being appointed to serve Nigeria.

I look forward to a day when we will be comfortable to elect two brothers as President and Vice President because of their credibility and antecedence not considering their geo-political origin.

Even Sadder is the fact that the people who cry more for their kinsmen to be appointed into positions are the people who don't get to benefit anything from them.

I don't believe we don't think, but I think our focus should be how credible or qualified the people appointed into positions are.

How to Answer Stupid Job Interview Questions

Our client Angela went on a job interview.

"It's supposed to be a Marketing Manager job, but they sure talk a lot about graphic design in the job ad," said Angie. "And the job's been posted on the company website for six months."

Angie went to the interview and sat in a lobby for half an hour. A nice woman came to get her and deposited her in a small interviewing room. A not-as-nice lady came in and started grilling Angie with questions, taking notes as Angie spoke (no eye contact - all business!).

"Tell me about your experience with Adobe Illustrator."

"Tell me how much you know about InDesign."

"Tell me what you know about search engines."

Wait a second, thought Angie. Something is off - this lady is just reading questions from a script. She doesn't know how the pieces fit together. She doesn't know anything about this job!

Angie is a marketer, not a graphic designer. She knows tons about search engines, but none of what she knows would have impressed her interviewer, who kept her eyes glued to her notepad and scribbled furiously throughout the interview.

"May I ask a question?" asked Angie finally. "Sure," said the lady.

"This job has been open for a while," said Angie. "What would you say is the reason it's taken some time to find the right person?"

"I'm choosy," said the interviewer, and that was that.

Angie never heard from the company again, but she hadn't waited around after the interview, either. She could see in a flash that no one with spark and self-esteem would thrive in that company. As far as I know, that job is still open.

A job search is a test of your fortitude. The struggling economy doesn't make it easy, and an even bigger challenge is the dysfunctional recruiting process used by nearly every medium-sized and large employer.

I want you to keep in mind that it's not you - the system itself is broken beyond repair. You are fine. It's the combination of talent-repelling job ads, Black Hole application systems, and thoughtless, soul-crushing interview processes that make a job search so hard on your emotions.

The good news is that slowly, the tide is turning. I've been writing about putting a human voice in business for twenty years, but since we put a name and mission to the the Human Workplace cause in 2012, the pace of change toward a mojo-fueled work world has accelerated dramatically.

These days, we get as many inquiries in our office from employers looking to boost the mojo level in their organizations as we do from job-seekers looking for Human Workplaces to join.

Still, you can't assume that when you go on a job interview, your interviewers will be as Human Workplace-aware as you are. They may be just the opposite, like Miss Choosy in our story above.

They may ask you idiotic interview questions and work hard to make the relationship "I'm in charge - you're dogmeat" abundantly clear throughout your interview conversation.

When you're asked a foolish, irrelevant question on a job interview, it's hard to know how to respond. Do you answer the question sincerely, ironically, or a mix or the two? Is it best to play the part of the The Good Little Interviewee and give no sign that your time is being wasted and your IQ is seeping out through your ears?

If you play that part too well, you may get hired into a job that will suck your life force away. So what do you do, when the brainless interview questions start flying?

Here's our guide to stupid interview questions, to bookmark and pull out before your next job interview.

1. If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?

This question is so pointless and by extension, insulting (Do you have a job opening to fill or not? Why would you use our precious time together asking me fanciful kindergarten questions?) that it's a red flag.

Either this firm lets its interviewers ask any random questions they want on a job interview, or they've actually talked about it and decided this question is worth asking. Either way, if a fresh-faced baby interviewer or HR screener asks you this question, I'd hate for you to get up and leave before you've made it to the hiring manager, the person who has the Business Pain we came to learn about.

(If your hiring manager asks you this question, you have my permission to get up and leave. Just say "Oh, look at the time! So sorry, I forgot that I have an appointment in eight minutes. Lovely to meet you, though!") Hit the road, and go get yourself a nice gelato.

You might want to answer this way: "I'd be an ebola virus, and infect your competitors!" but I fear your interviewer wouldn't pick up on the satire. Better to answer the question with a short answer and then ask your own question, like this:

INTERVIEWER: If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?

YOU: Hmmm, probably some kind of wild cat, like a jaguar - I enjoy the hunt. Can I ask you a question about that?

INTERVIEWER: Er- sure!

YOU: I'm always interested in the interview questions that companies ask. Is that your own addition to the company's interview script, or does everyone here use that question? I'll bet you hear some fascinating answers!

A human being in the chair across from you will enjoy telling you about all the wild and domestic animals s/he's met on past interviews. If your interviewer can't handle unscripted conversation and looks panicked at your question, you can just say "That's okay! We can talk about that later."

During your job search, you'll decide whether and how far to push the frame "I'm the interviewer -- I ask the questions, and you answer them!" over and over again. I encourage you, if you haven't done it already, to try a meta-question like "I'm curious how that question helps you make better hires?" if you can ask it with a smile on your face.

I understand that if you've recently endured a string of interviews studded with stupid interview questions, that smile could be hard to maintain.

2. With all the talented candidates, why should we hire you?

This interview question comes from the genre called "How badly do you want it?" that still plagues corporations and institutions decades after we all realized that the most-grovelly applicants don't make the best hires. We still love to test job-seekers on their DESIRE for the job, asking insulting questions like this.

I hate this interview question, because it asks a job-seeker to do two awful things. First, the question asks a job-seeker to assume a supplicant position and beg for the job. Secondly, it asks a person to compare him- or herself to people s/he's never met and likely never will.

Here's how you can handle this one:

INTERVIEWER: With all the talented candidates, why should we hire you?

YOU: Great question, and I think that's really the point of our conversation today -- to determine whether I'm the person for the job and whether this is the job for me. It might be that you should hire me. I love this field and I'm excited to keep growing muscles in it. That being said, I haven't met the other candidates and I'm sure there are smart and capable people in that group. That's going to be your challenge, to consider what's ahead for you and which person can best fill that role. I have total faith that if we're supposed to be working together, we'll figure that out.

3. What's your greatest weakness?

This question comes down from our Puritan forefathers, who saw life as a joyless quest to surmount personal deficiencies and weaknesses. Cheery vision, right?

I reject the view that people have weaknesses. People come in a fascinating array of types, and part of the fun of being alive is that we get to figure out where we shine and maneuver ourselves into that spot.

The old idea of weaknesses-to-correct is giving way to the new idea 'figure out what you love to do, and do it all the time.' Who has time to work and work to get slightly better at things we'll never love and never be great at?

I recommend that you handle this horrendous question this way:

INTERVIEWER: What's your greatest weakness?

YOU: Great question! I used to obsess about my weaknesses when I was younger. I took classes and read books like you wouldn't believe, and then over time it occurred to me that I should be focusing on the things I do well, like designing financial reports. Other things -- graphic design, for instance - aren't for me, so I steer myself toward the work that jazzes me and where I can make the biggest impact.

4. Where do you see yourself in five years?

Really, are people still hearing this ancient interview question in 2014? Yep, interviewers still pull out this lame Mad Men era question and ask it, so you've got to be prepared. The truth is that no one can make a five-year-horizon career plan in 2014 (maybe the Pope - and maybe not even him).

This may have been a great question to ask when The Beverly Hillbillies was filming new episodes. Today, it's a waste of interview airtime, but you still have to answer it.

Try this approach:

INTERVIEWER: Where do you see yourself in five years?

YOU: I love Finance, and I don't have plans to move out of it but then again you never know what influences will hit you. I'm interested in getting my MBA, so five years from now I could be one year out of school and I may think totally differently at that point than I do now. The things I can say for sure are that if I'm alive five years from now, I'll be working hard at something I love and supporting the people around me. For me, the team is as important as the work.

What interview questions should replace these stupid, old ones?

When you get into your new job and start interviewing people yourself, what questions will you ask them? When you adopt the Interviewing with a Human Voice approach, you won't ask lame interview questions like the ones on our list. You'll ask job-seekers to bring their questions to the job interview instead, and invite them to go first, asking questions of you to start the interview.

You'll learn much more about your candidates from the questions they ask you than you ever would from their answers!

Once the applicant's questions are exhausted, here are some questions an interviewer can pose:

1) Given what you know about our company and this role so far -- and this is your chance to ask me anything you want to know, by the way -- what would you see as the most likely goals for the new hire in this position, over the next six months?

2) Here's what we're dealing with in Tech Support. (Explain your situation.) What would your approach to that set of conditions be? What would be your attack plan, if you got this job?

3) How does this job mesh with your career plan for yourself? How will it grow your flame?

Job interviews can be fun and enriching for everyone involved -- and they should be!

When we interview folks at Human Workplace, we tell them "This is a job interview, and potentially a coaching session. We have an opening to fill and you might be interested in that job, but that is just our starting point. If this isn't the right job for you, let's talk about you and your career instead." Sometimes, candidates say "I'm not sure I want this job, but I wanted to meet you guys." We say "Cool! We had booked the time anyway. It's great to meet you."

Fifty percent of our interviews veer into career coaching and that's absolutely wonderful. After all, a job is just a job. Your flame is everything!

Our company is called Human Workplace. Our mission is to reinvent work for people!

We help job-seekers grow their flames and get great jobs with employers that deserve their talents. We help employers brand themselves and reinvent their recruiting processes to snag and keep smart and capable people and we help them grow the Team Mojo on their teams. We invite everyone to step into the Human Workplace. We launched in November 2012 and have over 200,000 members already. You can join us, too!

THROUGH THE GLASS

Sometimes I wonder where I would have been if I was in the time of Jesus, would I have been among His followers or would I have been among those who crucified Him? I would like to think I would have been His follower because of all the knowledge I have now, but come to think of it, if a carpenter's son who grew up in your area comes to change all the doctrines (about sabbath, eye for an eye, stoning of certain offenders, associating with Jews et.c) which was passed on from generations by great leaders, prophets and men of old, would you follow Him?

God revealed Himself as 'I Am That I Am' to Moses because of the circumstance Moses was in at the moment, He needed to prove to the Israelites and the Egyptians that God had really sent Him. In like manner, God might have revealed part of Himself to someone because of a particular thing in that person's life, God also wants to reveal Himself to you in a way that would help your circumstance, that's why you need to have a personal relationship with Him. Relying on other people's revelation of God might even lead you astray.

The problem is that most of us want to see God through the eyes of our pastors and leaders, instead of us finding out who He is to us. If the people of old had opened their hearts to discover who God is, they would have seen God in the flesh as Jesus Christ and their lives would have been changed forever.

Even today God wants to reveal Himself to you, it's not enough to rely solely on the word preached by the pastor or the prayers prayed in church, we should long to know God through personal study of the word and prayers.

Who is God to you?

No matter how close you are to me, if I take a cup of tea you would never know exactly how it taste till you drink of it.

Therefore, taste and see that the Lord is good.

THE BLIND SPOT

There's a place in d eye where nerves pass in front of th retina thereby blocking light from getting to that part of the retina - This tiny spot is called the blind spot, whatever detail which falls under d blind spot is not perceived.

ILLUSTRATION: write two alphabets on a paper, each at both ends of d paper (left and right), keeping a paper at a distance (not too far from d eyes) close one eye and focus on one alphabet, after some seconds d other letter would disappear.

Everyday, I hear a lot of people all over the world complaining about different problems, even on the news bad news is given priority over good news (we barely even hear good news on tv). We complain about our government, churches, boss, customers, and every single thing. As a result, we fail to see the numerous blessings we are living in. The funniest illustration is that we complain about our leaders (especially government) and where the next leader enter office we say the previous leader was better (meanwhile we complained about him before), and we keep doing this, not seeing the bright side.

Truth is, when we focus on the bad, even the good disappears, the law of attraction explains it.

The best way to enjoy life is to focus on the good and ignore the bad. My motto is: don't complain about anything you don't have plans to change.

Feel good.

WHEN THE MUSIC FADES (DANCING WITHOUT MUSIC PT 2)

In a church in England, the pastor banned 'praise and worship' in the church for a period of time. Actually its most appropriate to say that he banned all singing in the church because his reason for doing that was to let his members learn that there are other ways of worshiping God apart from singing. In fact, like I said in my previous article, people often get lost in the melody of the song and lose the main focus of worship which is God. 

True worship is not limited to singing a slow worship song, in fact its so bad now that 'worship' is a type of song - the slow song that usually comes before praises - the fast song. 

Basically, we worship God when we do what we were created to do. For example, if God created you to be a fast runner, you worship God whenever you use the ability of running fast. We all are gifted with one ability or the other, it could be aesthetic, athletic or even in the way to organise things or people, the way we talk and relate to people et cetera. The point is we worship God when we use those abilities, provided it is not in a sinful way. 

God has also created us to love Him, so we worship God when we love Him. But since no man has seen God, the only way we can express our love for God is by loving or helping others. In fact the best way to use our ability to worship God is to use it in a way that it helps others. 

God has also created us to have fellowship with Him just like it was in Eden. Fellowship is not limited to church activities, fellowship means you should be in constant communication with God and not just when you want to kill one uncle somewhere or when you want a blessing. In fact can you remember ever talking to God without asking for a thing? Even in our daily activities we could say 'thank you Lord', 'I trust in you,' 'you are wonderful'. If we do this regularly we would find out that we are in constant communication with God, praying without ceasing. 

God also wants us to trust Him totally. For example, Abraham attempting to sacrifice the fulfilment of God's promise for his life because He recognised God as His source of blessing and not Isaac who was is long awaited son. Trusting God means total obedience to His word. 

Generally, worshiping God is doing that thing that gives Him pleasure. Matt Redman is a member of the church I earlier mentioned in this write-up, and after the ban was lifted, he wrote a song 'The Heart of Worship' where he said; 

I'll bring you more than a song, 

Cos a song in itself is not what you have required, 

You search much deeper within than the way things appear, 

You're looking into my Heart.' 

Now is the hour to worship God in spirit and in truth, through doing things that would give Him pleasure, things that would make Him smile.