Nice Speech, Mr President Buhari – But Remember you’re a Democrat now!
Inauguration Speech of New Nigeria President, Muhammadu Buhari – Analysed
“If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.” – Julius Caesar
Inauguration speeches tell you everything you need to know about a new President; and at the same time they also tell you absolutely nothing.
On the one hand, the tone that a new President adopts in the speech, often gives you a real sense of the nature and essence of the man (or woman); on the other hand, the words themselves and particularly the promises made, typically mean little or nothing in practice.
This was a special day for Nigeria. Never before had there been a peaceful handover of power from an incumbent President (Goodluck Jonathan) to an opposition challenger (Muhammadu Buhari). It needed a special speech.
As inauguration addresses go, President Buhari’s speech was actually pretty good, but not perfect.
My Grade for the Speech: Good, nearly Great (but 2 mistakes).
The Good Stuff
The President chose wisely in making the celebration of democracy a key theme of his speech.
He opened on that very subject and generously commended the hapless former President Goodluck Jonathan for his magnanimous concession of electoral defeat and subsequent peaceful handover. He then promised not to seek retribution against his enemies, reminding us that “the past is prologue”, which we should expect him to trot out as a line whenever anyone tries to refer back to his military past.
By far the best quote of the speech came when he promised to govern for all of Nigeria:is
“I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody”.
A great sound-bite!
If (and it’s a big If) he actually lives up to his promise to eschew the sectionalism that has blighted so much of Nigeria’s politics, this one quote could ultimately define his Presidency.
Of course, everyone wanted to hear what he had to say on the subject of Boko Haram, a militant Islamic Jihadist insurgency that has committed terrible acts of barbarism, including the despicable kidnap of the 212 Chibok school girls.
The President gave a surprisingly hard-hitting analysis of the terrorist sect, describing it as a ‘mindless, godless group who are as far away from Islam as one can think of’, but at the same time was insightful enough to highlight that its fame had begun as a result of the extra-judicial killing of its preacher by the police, and that its power had been allowed to grown through the complacency and mishandling of the last regime. When he then promised to go after the terrorist organisation and do everything possible to rescue the kidnapped girls alive, you kind of believed he would do just that. Yet, at the same time, he surprised us with a promise to address the human rights violations of the Armed Forces.
Whether this actually ever happens in practice remains to be seen, nevertheless it was a smart thing to nod to the international community, who were watching intently.
Aside from dealing with terrorism, like all new leaders, he promised to address pretty much every other problem afflicting the country: cross-border terrorism, sea piracy, refugees and boat people, financial crime, cyber crime, climate change, the spread of communicable diseases, pervasive corruption, fuel and power shortages, kidnappings, armed robberies, herdsmen/farmers clashes, cattle rustlings, youth unemployment, weak agriculture, lack of road and rail infrastructure development, judicial reform.
What a list!
Of course, no President can really hope to tackle all or even most of these problems, each of which could dominate an entire Presidential term. But when it’s your first day in the job, you can be forgiven such over-exuberance. From Day 2 of his Presidency though, he would be wiser to under-promise and over-deliver.
“We must not succumb to hopelessness and defeatism. We can fix our problems.“, he declared somewhat Obamaesque, and then challenged those who doubted him with a reminder of the achievements of the great civilisations of the nation’s past like the Benin, Borno Oyo and other empires.
You half-expected him to start chanting “Yes, We Can!”.
But of course, few leaders do public speaking as well as Obama, and at times President Buhari struggled to match his oral delivery to the fluency of text. Yet as a first Presidential effort, there was much to commend in this speech, particularly the sense of the authority of the tall man, which had been so lacking under the muted leadership of Goodluck Jonathan.
The Bad
The thing about speeches, is that whatever the words themselves say, there is always an unwritten subtext that tends to say more.
And for all his attempts to present himself as a reformed Democrat, President Buhari still could not help but reveal that underlying hard man instinct. It no doubt served him well in a military dictatorship, but in a democracy, it is counter productive.
At one point, he spoke warmly of the nation’s Founding Fathers, but then described their successors as ‘spoilt children breaking everything and bringing disorder to the house’. A little hypocritical you might say, unless of course he assumed that we had already forgotten about his tenure has military ruler in the 80s.
He warned the media including social media users, to act with ‘responsibility and patriotism.’ But this sounded more like a veiled threat, and a disturbing one at that from someone, who as leader had passed the repressive 1984 Protection Against False Accusations Decree, under which journalists were tried and imprisoned for criticising the military government.
He should know that in the 24 hour news cycle of modern democracy, media houses chase the story irrespective of where it leads, and without much consideration for patriotism; and more importantly in this day and age of twitter, facebook, and smartphones, you definitely can’t hope to have any control over the public using social media – just ask leaders like Mubarak during the Arab Spring.
This was a mistake, and one that tended to undermine his new democratic credentials.
His second mistake was more about style than substance, but as a speech purist it still bugged me.
Quotes are a great tool in speeches, but only if you choose a quote that is well known and that resonates with your audience.
But in what should have been the climactic high point to a decent speech, President Buhari chose to end with this:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life, Is bound in shallows and miseries.”
Recognise it? No. Neither did I.
It’s an unfamiliar quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, with a meaning that is pretty obscure.
And seriously, Mr President, how wise is it to quote from a military dictator, who was ultimately assassinated by his own Senate, when the theme you have been propounding is that of democracy and good government?
Instead of soaring to a momentous conclusion with a quote that encapsulated the essence of his theme, it meant that his speech ended with a whimper that undermined the strong foundations he had built to that point.
Shame! It should have been better. Still, no one’s perfect, and it still was a pretty good speech.
But now the real work begins.
The best of luck, Mr President! Your country definitely needs the best of you.
And remember, lest you allow your military instincts to get the better of you, please remember that leadership in a democracy, unlike dictatorship, is messy and uncertain. But democracy and the rule of law really is the better option. As Winston Churchill once highlighted:
‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried’.
Or, if you insist on quotes by Julius Caesar, remember this one:
“If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.”
You’ve already got the power, so your job now is to defend of the rule of law and see the nation thrive!
GreatSpeechConsultancy 
I absolutely loathed that Julius Caesar quote. It was unnecessary, ill-judged and out of cultural context of the occasion. How much more refreshing would it have been had he ended with one of the many proverbs from Nigeria’s myriad language groups which speaks to the work that is begun and the responsibility it entails. I found the speech competent but very uninspiring: the greatest speeches describe a vision and then invite a call to action. There was no vision at all here. And in the country with one of the largest youth populations in the world, not one message directly aimed at them. I would of course rather he got results than did soaring rhetoric, but the rhetoric matters, and despite his obvious ambivalence about modern technology especially social media, rhetoric matters now more than ever. I wish him all the best and I hope his presidency inspires Nigeria to finally fulfilling its destiny of greatness. But get a better speechwriter. A certain Mr Sonaike is available…
@Olu
He’ll have to prove his democratic credentials before he signs me up as speech writer.
To be fair he did at least mention youth unemployment
“Unemployment, notably youth un-employment features strongly in our Party’s Manifesto. We intend to attack the problem frontally”
But inspirational rhetoric was definitely not on his agenda. Can’t decide whether he thought he was being inspiring or it did not even occur to him to attempt it. But actually I don’t think that’s what we need. Country was inspired enough by the peaceful transition. It’s non-corrupt governing we need now.
We wait and see.