BY TOCHUKWU EZUKANMA
On May 29th, 2019, President Mohammadu Buhari was inaugurated for a
second four year term. The elaborately ceremonious event was all
familiar for it was the seventh presidential inauguration Nigerians were
witnessing in the country’s twenty years of unbroken democracy. As
usual, it was a jamboree of the shakers and movers of the triumphant
political party. As usual, it was also graced by the splendor of
military parades, an assortment of national and international invitees,
and a resplendent array of members of the judiciary and legislature.
Typically, the high points of this pomp and pageantry are the swearing
in of the president and the president’s inaugural speech.
But, noticeably absent from this second inauguration ceremony was the
presidential inaugural address. Nigerians justifiably expected the
speech because it is an essential fixture of presidential inaugurations
in Nigeria. Its absence was as disheartening as it was revealing. It was
disheartening that a president that stood at the end of a four year
term, and at the threshold of another, refused to give Nigerians an
account of his four year service to the country, and apprise them of
what to expect in his next four year term. It revealed the president for
what he is: a retrograde record breaker.
The inaugural speech is a global phenomenon. Since the advent of modern
democracy in 18th Century United States of America, it has remained a
central aspect of every presidential inauguration. With it, the
president sets the moral tone of his presidency and defines his
objectives and goals for his new administration. With his 1933 inaugural
speech, the incoming American president, Theodore Roosevelt, gave hope
to a desperate nation buffeted by an economic recession, and unnerved by
Japanese militarism in Asia and the stormy stirrings of Nazi barbarism
in Europe. Conrad Black summed it up succinctly, “When Roosevelt
finished his fifteen minute address, no one doubted that a drastically
new era has begun…”
In 1940, on May 13th, in his opening address as the new British Prime
Minister, Winston Churchill, with his electrifying oratory – “I have
nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat (in the war) against a
monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of
human crime” – redefined an epoch. He roused a demoralized, pacific
and war-weary British nation and Commonwealth to martial resolve and
glory. In his 1961 inaugural speech, John F Kennedy struck a memorable
chord in the American minds and set the stage for his New Frontier
policy with his unforgettable, almost hagiographic, phrase, “Ask not
what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your
country”.
Nigeria is in dire straits. The entire spectrum of the Nigerian society
is troubled. There is poverty and hunger, violence and brutality,
ignorance and disease, lawlessness and strife, etc in the land. Apart
from the need to give Nigerians a report of his earlier four years in
office, and highlight his objectives, goals and strategies for his new
term, the president should have given an inaugural address to rally a
fractious and despondent country and give her, for long, debased and
suffering masses hope. It was an opportunity to give solace to millions
of Nigerians afflicted by the devastations of Boko Haram terrorism,
Fulani herdsmen murderous fanaticism and other myriad sources of
violence in Nigeria. He should have, on that day, at the least,
reassured the teeming poor and downtrodden, and the seemly forgotten men
and women at the bottom of the economic pyramid of a hopeful economic
future.
The country is abuzz with speculations on why President Buhari gave no
inaugural speech. The optimists surmise that it was deliberate: a
conscientious choice to defer the speech for another day. But then, the
question readily arises, if it is given on a day other than the
inaugural day, will it still be an inaugural speech? The cynics
speculate that he did not speak because he did not know what to say. If
he did not know what to say, his advisers and handlers would have
educated him on what to say, and written it down for him. Still, others,
in their cynicism, think that he gave no speech because he does not
care. He is totally indifferent to his responsibilities as the president
of Nigeria and the expectations of Nigerians. This seems the most
plausible of all the reasons.
Are the consequences of his four years of indifference to his duties and
insensitivity to the legitimate aspirations of Nigerians not
conspicuously evident? Our educational and health care systems remain in
a mess and our country’s social indexes are still pitiful. Despite the
hoopla about the fight against corruption, Nigeria remains extremely
corrupt, and Nigerians, remorselessly corrupt. Presently, the country is
incredibly divided. Even during the civil war, Nigerians were not as
divided along ethnic, regional and religious lines. The Nigerian economy
hobbles precariously, as the unemployment rate remains dangerously high,
especially, among the youth, and more and more Nigerians slide into
desperate poverty. The dearth of electric power continues to render
businesses un-operatable and unprofitable. The incidence of violence is
unparalleled: terrorism, kidnapping, banditry, meaningless killings,
etc.
President Buhari is a record breaker. He has already broken a number of
records – all in the negative – in his four year presidency. In the
annals of Nigeria, he is the first president that it took six months to
appoint his ministers. Never before in the history of Nigeria did the
naira fall so low against the dollar as during his presidency. Has he
not given the Fulani herdsmen a carte blanche in their murderous binge
across Nigeria? No Nigerian president ever pandered so brazenly to a
terrorist group and its unyielding butchery of the innocent. So, it was
in line with his tradition of breaking the record in the negative that
he became the first Nigerian president to get inaugurated without giving
an inaugural speech.
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria
maciln18@yahoo.com
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