The inauguration speech of a new President is
unique in a number of ways and for a number of
reasons. It is the first after a campaign and thus
provides the newly-elected President an
opportunity to articulate, in a bipartisan (non-
partisan) manner, his vision of development for
the nation. It is one speech regarded as being
from the heart of the man-of-the-moment,
knowing that the speech-maker is no longer
under the debilitating pressure represented by
political hustings. It is untainted by the legendary
penchant of bureaucrats everywhere to compel
obedience of incoming political operatives to
what the former consider the practical realities of
governance, defining the transition from
Candidate to President, as the case may be.

In
President Muhammadu Buhari’s case, it is a
speech that came after four attempts, spanning
all of 12 years, at becoming President. It,
therefore, cannot be waived off as just another
speech. No, it is not. Rather, it allows us the
citizens access into the inner recesses of the mind
of the speaker and serve as a necessary compass
for gauging the direction of his government. It is
this importance that an Inauguration Speech
holds that compelled this intervention of ours.

One was privileged to have read a few
commentaries on the speech. The United States
Secretary of State, John Kerry’s and the one by
the Governor of Ekiti State, Ayo Fayose, were
patently diplomatic and political respectively.

Ebun Adegoruwa and Kayode Ajulo, in separate
pieces, both noted that the Buhari’s speech
sounded more like a campaign treatise rather
than a statement of intent from a newly
inaugurated President. I cannot agree with them
more, but there are also some quite profound
features of the speech which they did not see or
failed to mention. I wish to call attention to these
in the context in which they represent, for me,
ominous signs from the throne of power.

Mr. President set the tone for his speech by
suggesting that his would be the first ever
democratically-elected government in Nigeria, or
perhaps since 1999. According to him, “We have
today a truly democratically-elected government
in place.” The sense in this is that not since 1999
had we had a “truly democratically-elected
government in place”. I doubt if even the most
critical observers of our electoral process these
past years, bumpy as it is, would agree with this
narration. The culture of our politician not to
accept defeat and put down any election in which
they are not favoured as rigged is definitely what
is abroad here. Above all, there is what sounds
like a tinge of megalomaniac therein, which if it is
correct, is quite ominous.

One would have
expected Mr. President to accept the facts of
history even where such do not seem to favour
him, in this instance that he actually lost those
earlier elections he was referring to.

Perhaps more importantly, many would argue
that the results of the 2015 elections were not
uncontentious because the elections were free
and fair. Rather, the elections were not
contentious because critical players chose to
accept the results. To then give the impression
that the 2015 presidential election was not just a
free and fair one, but the very first in the history
of democratic engagement in the country is again,
quite ominous.

This is where the decision of former President
Goodluck Jonathan to concede defeat is critical.
Indeed, one of the two great things about the
Buhari speech are its very brief nature, and the
great tribute it paid to the former President who
in spite of the evident limitations of the election
was quick to concede defeat. Those who sought to
belittle what the man did by insinuating that he
.had no choice anyway, or that he was threatened
to do so, I am sure would have got better
educated by Buhari’s own analysis of the issue, I think a day before he was sworn in. It was to the
effect that Jonathan had a choice as he could
have made the entire transition process quite
messy. At worst, he could have chosen to be the
fall-guy, in the event that he failed to retain the
prized stool for himself. He could have played Samson in the Bible who decided to bring down
an entire edifice with himself. That Jonathan
chose not to do this in spite of obvious
temptations is worthy of celebration.

He has led
Nigeria on its first critical step to what Larry
Diamond called “the two turn-over rule” by which
democratic consolidation is measured. In
celebrating Jonathan on this score, I think, more
than anything else, Buhari elevated himself.

Now, whether the “act of graciously accepting
defeat by (an) outgoing President” would “become
the standard political conduct in the country” as
hoped for by Buhari in his speech, it must be said,
is totally in the hands of the President to
determine being the next in line that has an
election to face.

It is intriguing why Buhari chose to make a
distinction between those who voted for him and
those who did not. It was uncalled for. It was
distractive and greatly detracted from the
profundity of the speech. The truth is that his
victory notwithstanding, President Buhari is in to
preside over a deeply divided nation. Yes, the
President won resoundingly in the North,
especially in the North-West zone with those
heavy figures. He managed to scrape a victory in
the South-West, but lost comprehensively in the
entire East (South-East and South-South). In the
circumstances, Mr. President has a duty, and he
must discharge this as quickly as possible, to bring
the nation together. And so, these are not times
to begin to make a distinction between those who
voted for him and those who did not.

That is as
unnecessary as it is divisive. It is perhaps the only
context in which his “I belong to everybody …” line
would have been apt, not in the sense in which he
used it here as we shall indicate presently.

In the ever-present desire to draw blood, many
Nigerians and of course their news media
celebrated with much glee the assertion by the
President that, “I belong to everybody and I
belong to nobody”. That would seem to have
resonated well with a large number of people,
making it perhaps the most quoted aspect of the
speech. Yet, looked at more critically, this
assertion, I make bold to aver, does no service to
the cause of democracy in our land. Now, I guess
most people who felt good about that aspect of
the speech imputed it to mean a reference to the
godfather(s) in the APC. While this intervention
does not in any way constitute an endorsement
of “godfatherism” in politics, or better still the
“godfathers” in reference, it calls attention to the
fact, as adumbrated by Phillipe Schumpeter that
every democracy is “pacted”. It is every time and
everywhere a pact between several tendencies
and constituencies. This is particularly applicable
to the elite in politics, some of whom may have
the structures, funds and the grit but not the
candidate for an election and vice versa.

The
truth, therefore, is that Buhari’s adumbration,
populist as it may seem, gives an idea of a man
who found some group’s structures useful in
attaining power only for him to want to quickly
disown same. Recall that in spite of the much-
trumpeted cult following the President as
candidate was supposed to have in the North, he
ran for this office and lost on three consecutive
occasions. And then, he found comfort in the
political machinery of some other tendencies that
made him win at his fourth attempt. He,
therefore, in good conscience, cannot now plead
for and seek to occupy the moral high-ground and
play an orphan. For, the truth is, he, like most
political office holders in all climes and in all ages,
is owned. What he should seek to do is not to
disown the platform that made him President,
and so early at that, but to find a way to carefully
navigate such that where the particularistic
interests of that political machine is at variance
with the nation’s, he casts his lot with the latter.

Anything short of that would be opportunistic. It
would not augur well for stability and growth of
democratic institutions in the country.