There is a new president in town and we all know that. His name is Muhammadu Buhari. The words of his inauguration speech will be part of our national archive and hopefully will find a place in our presidential library, when and if we eventually have one. Nigerians and other nationals interested in our political affairs have engaged with the speech and the interpretations are varied. In 1,909 words, Buhari captured the mood and expectation of the country and the world’s expectation of Nigeria. It is an incontestable claim that the speech was brilliantly put together. It is contemporary in content and progressive in its punch lines. It also draws a little from the world’s beautiful past in its insertion of thoughts from Williams Shakespeare.
The contemporariness of Buhari’s inauguration speech is not only in its acknowledgment of the troubles staring with wide eyes at the country but also in its presidential salutation of the growing role of social media in our polity. Hear Buhari – ‘I would like to thank the millions of our supporters who believed in us even when the cause seemed hopeless. I salute their resolve in waiting long hours in rain and hot sunshine to register and cast their votes and stay all night if necessary to protect and ensure their votes count and were counted. I thank those who tirelessly carried the campaign on the social media. At the same time, I thank our other countrymen and women who did not vote for us but contributed to make our democratic culture truly competitive, strong and definitive.’ His other mention of social media was in the same breath with the Nigerian press. ‘The Nigerian press is the most vibrant in Africa. My appeal to the media today – and this includes the social media – is to exercise its considerable powers with responsibility and patriotism.’
When Edgar Chagwa Lungu of Zambia was sworn-in in January this year, he did not ascribe any specific mention to social media in his ascendency to power. President Jacob Zuma’s inauguration address at the Union Buildings in Pretoria in 2014 also fell short of any clear mention of this technology that is beginning to shape political conversations and socio-political dialectic. The United States of America is known for its culture of inaugural address and despite that, Barack Obama’s address in 2013 totally ignored the enormous role that young people and new media technology had played in his two different elections to the world’s topmost office.
The inaugural speech is often used by leaders to set their vision and leadership priorities before the country. For Buhari, his punch line which reverberated across the internet was – ‘I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody.’ There are powerful deliveries of inaugural speeches that are still being quoted in essays and public discussions today. Franklin D. Roosevelt is remembered for his ‘we have nothing to fear but fear itself’ insertion in inaugural speech and one of America’s most loved president, John F. Kennedy is still remembered today for saying ‘…and so my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country’. Abraham Lincoln’s speech is remembered for ‘With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.’
More specifically, Buhari thanked those who ‘tirelessly’ went about the campaign on social media. Students of political science will note that Buhari first won the election online especially given the several online polls wherein he defeated his closest rival, now former President Goodluck Jonathan. Those who were not perceptive enough kept saying that elections are not won online as Nigeria’s voting population were not online. A detailed post-mortem of the elections will show that this was a judgement passed in error.
In another vein, Buhari also seem to be asking the about 77 million Nigerians that access the internet to exercise their ‘considerable powers with responsibility and patriotism.’ It is a weighty statement from the new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. It may be his way of understanding that wars can be fought with or without dignity and a sense of patriotism. Buhari’s tenure as president is as good as the amount of his campaign promises he is able to keep. His handlers need to keep their eyes closely at www.buharimeter.com; a platform being championed by the Centre for Democracy and Development to ensure that ‘through Buharimeter, civil society groups, citizens, the media, academia, practitioners, political parties and other stakeholders will have access to reports on the status of the implementation of promises made by President Muhammadu Buhari. This is because all the promises made by the current government are documented in different sectors for easy identification.’
History has it that Warren Harding was the first President to take his oath and deliver his Inaugural address through loud speakers in 1921 while Calvin Coolidge’s Inaugural address was the first to be broadcast nationally by radio in 1925 and by 1949, Harry Truman was the first President to deliver his Inaugural address over television airwaves. Buhari’s speech is not the longest in history. That record belongs to William Harrison who delivered an inaugural address of 8,445 words on March 4, 1841. Buhari’s address may however go down in history as the first to publicly concede space to social media. He is also the first president in Nigeria whose inaugural address was live blogged and also streamed across the globe.
@SolaFagro
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‘Sola Fagorusi is a social entrepreneur and a prized freelance writer with a bias for youth and rural development. He started off as a youth staff with Action Health Incorporated in 2001. The Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife alumnus currently manages the programmes ofOneLife Initiative, Nigeria. ‘Sola is a DESPLAY Africa (Africa’s foremost and most consistent annual youth democracy academy) fellow and has been on its faculty since 2011. Keenly interested in governance and pan-Africanism, he volunteers as online editor of YouthHub Africa; a cyber-community for young Africans involved in social change. He believes in the efficacy of oratory and writing as tools to drive developmental engagements. As a freelance writer, he spares time to pen thoughts on contemporary societal issues and is a weekly columnist with Nigeria’s most read daily ? Punch Newspaper. His training and capacity cuts across democracy and governance, leadership, micro-enterprise, ICT4D, SRH, value chains, development communication and policy issues. He tweets @SolaFagro and blogs at www.kadunaboy.com
