Ben Bruce: Heading For The Senate

By Banji Ojewale

As it is going to be with the next set of Senators of the United States of America, where new faces, the majority being the Republicans, are coming up, Nigeria in 2015 may witness a similar displacement of old hands in its Senate. I am not making any attempt to predict bloc party victory or defeat.

Ben Murray Bruce

(pix: thenewsnigeria)

There is always some tricky of impreciseness in it for analysts. In the case of the US, it was perhaps “easy” for the Cable News Network (CNN) to arrive  at its 246-Senate seat forecast for the Republicans in the November 2014 ballot because of the near-infallible opinion poll system in the country. CNN journalists and experts relied on such advanced sampling techniques as computer technology and sociological and psychological research.  

But it was not always so. The pollsters of the previous age plunged the US into trouble when their statistics misled the nation’s media. In the 1948 Presidential election, the “soothsayers” predicted victory for the Republican candidate Thomas Dewey. Now without waiting for the official count of the vote after the ballot, US newspapers declared in screaming headlines: Dewey defeats Truman.

But we all know what happened after the results were officially published. Harry Truman won and was elected the 33rd President of the United States of America. That was the “mis-prediction”  that damaged the integrity of the experts and the professionals and led them to doubt their own reliability.  It spurred them to work out a scientific and more dependable and exact way to foretell a poll outcome.

In my little corner here, as I rest on the mood of the nation and on the tradition of the scientific poll calls, I foresee several new personalities replacing the current set of senators. My interest in a couple of aspirants pushing for the Senate derives  from the pro-poor ideas they claim they will be standing for.

 

(pix:nassnig)

One such person is Mr. Ben Murray-Bruce. He has resigned his chairmanship of the Silverbird Group that owns Silverbird TV, Rhythm 93.7 fm, Silverbird Galleria among  others , to seek a place in the Senate on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He has also given up his post as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of a federal media outfit to pursue his ambition as required by the laws of the land.

He sees himself as a “game changer” who will be the spokesman for Nigeria’s poor and dis-priviledged in the law-making chamber if he gets there. He appears to have abandoned his former goal to go for the office of the governor in Bayelsa State. He planned to use that office as a powerful lever to fight for the downtrodden. But the defence of the lowly placed and deprived can be mounted on either dais – executive or legislative.

However in my opinion, the one that promises methodical and lasting results is the exercise of the legislative lobby. We can prove this with the Republican celebration that followed their comprehensive rout of the Democrats in the United States Congress. The president or governor may run round with executive powers the statutes give him. He may even sometimes abuse such authority. Nevertheless he can’t go beyond the circle marked by the lawmaker who knows his onions. To gain good ground even in that prescribed circle, the executive, if he is an astute one, must submit to the lawmakers and exhibit uncanny statesmanship.

The 33 President of the United States, Harry Truman,
displaying the infamous copy of the  Chicago Tribune 
that wrongly ascribed victory to his opponent in November 
1948."That  ain't the way I heard it!" Truman told reporters
(pix: archives.gov)

That is why these last two years of the Barack Obama Presidency in a Republican-led Congress, their largest since the Second World War, would task Obama’s skills of negotiation and diplomacy. The legislator, if he is worth that name and he is faithful to his calling is really the rallying point in a representative democracy. The Executive is only symbolic of the spirit of Government. The legislature is the driver of the system, wheeled by a conscientious judiciary and impartial media. Remove the legislator or neutralise him and the whole system corrupts, collapses, crashes and dies.

Ben Murray-Bruce, like other Nigerians eyeing the legislative chamber therefore, has the opportunity to address the poverty puzzle of Nigeria. It is our greatest headache. We are a poor nation right on top of wealth and nature’s rich resources. Ours must count among the wonders of the world. If the list of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world is reviewed and brought to our era, this Nigerian contradiction must either be in the log or it should be classed as the Eighth Wonder! A legislature peopled by self-effacing lot given to patriotic fervor can resolve our nation’s embarrassing paradox for good.

Sometime ago, I wrote the following when Ben Bruce spoke on the debate over the fuel subsidy which is returning to the front burner: “Since independence in 1960” he lamented, “successive administrations have paid little attention to the poor. Government has played the role of Robin Hood, unfortunately though in reverse: they have taken from the rich and given to the poor… it is not a sin to be poor.

“He then proposed the unthinkable: a massive binge on the transport sector to the tune of N 318 billion over the next 10 years and N79.6 billion fund to subsidise bus and taxi services across Nigeria! Ben Bruce crashed the ancient fort of the anti-subsidy army which often assails us with the argument that  government support for the poor is out of fashion worldwide when he referred to the U.S, Belgium, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, Finland etc. as countries that intervene heavily in the transport area by as much as 70 per cent.

Toiling Nigerians 

“He incensed the cut-support-for-the-poor authorities further with a yet crazier idea: ‘all school children in uniform, senior citizens over 60 and children above 10 must travel free of charge by public transportation…’ The position of the Silverbird Group chief isn’t too difficult to understand. He isn’t opposed to removal of petrol support fund; but he says, ‘put the Ben Bruce plan into place first before the removal in order not to worsen the fragility of the poor and in turn destablise the society in the long run.

“It is such radical ideas we need to truly transform our society, not the same delivery of worn-out old cliches asking perennially for a cut in government spending to enrich the rich. There are smarter ways to cut government spending and dumber ways, wrote Washington Post when deriding the US Republican Congressmen who insisted on shaving off a big chunk of President Obama’s budget”.

In my opinion, the strong argument in favour of Ben Murray Bruce seems to be his muscular preparedness for the public office he is asking for. He churns out statistics on the plight of the polity in ways that suggest he has undertaken a diligent study of the challenges we are facing and he is ready to battle them.

May I conclude this piece by submitting that the serial failure of leadership in Nigeria is traceable to their lack of industriousness in planning for the office? May I add that the reason Nigeria’s all-time hero late Chief Obafemi Awolowo is still the revered by all and sundry as the best president we never had is because he always arrived at answers to the problems of the society by engaging in laborious homework ahead of seeking office? Shall we say then that good leadership is the product of sufficing preparation? Vice versa: The mediocre leadership a nation gets is the result of menial-mentality readiness!

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*Ojewale, a journalist at Onibuku, Ota, Ogun State, is a contributor to SCRUPLES. He could be reached with: bmrtbo@yahoo.com