It was the standout phrase from President Muhammadu Buhari’s Inauguration Day speech on May 29, 2015: “I belong to everybody, I belong to nobody”. The phrase went viral, triggering an output of comical expressions. Continue...


In one of them, the presidential spouse was shown asking Buhari if he meant that he doesn’t belong to the wife anymore, to which the President answered that he merely joked. In another more politically mischievous interpretation, APC National Leader, Bola Tinubu, was facing an imaginary reporter, who accosted him in a court.

Asked what he was doing there, Bola Tinubu answered that he came to change his name to”Everybody Bola Tinubu”! It seemed clear that Buhari was underlining the fact that as Nigerian president, he would endeavour to be president of all, but would at the same time not be hostage to individuals. It is a courageous statement coming from a president who was elected on the platform of a political party that was at best, an amalgam of disparate interests. It is never easy to stay aloof from the currents of the mass and the individual, given the pitiless tides of politics.


But more poignantly for me, is how to extrapolate the thought which midwifed such phrase into the realities of contemporary Nigerian society. Despite what many might think, Nigeria today is a class society with expressions of some of the most vicious levels of inequalities and injustice in the world today. While a tiny band of our national bourgeoisie creams off some of the greatest levels of luxurious existence comparable to ruling classes elsewhere, we also have some of the greatest and most frightening levels of deprivation in equal measure.

So the issues that face the new president today are directly related to the change slogan which encapsulated why he got the vote of the majority of Nigerians in the first place.

This is a country in need of reformation at levels that might be more than the President himself either realises or could be too frightened to head towards. Nigeria sits atop a volcano of potentially dire social discontent and the slogan of change must sooner than later, begin to take a concrete outline in terms of positive impact on social being of the mass of our people.

Unfortunately, ruling class politicians are practically the same everywhere; they never seem to be in a hurry to look at the problems of society in the face. What is central to their political existence is the posturing for advantages that consumes critical time and resource, but in the long run leads to the sidestepping of the vital issues that trouble the people. Buhari went to the Nigerian people canvassing a strong security posture, a definitive onslaught against corruption as well as finding ways and means on the ...


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