That Superb Inaugural Speech By Our New President

By

Dr. Wunmi Akintide

WUMIONE@aol.com

 

I criticize where criticism is called for, and I praise where I think encomium is truly deserved. I know the taste of the pudding is in the eating, and that one great speech does not a good President make. But our new President has done our nation proud by putting his best foot forward, so to speak, by making such a very concise, simple, honest and insightful speech that does not pull punches, but has adequately covered all the basics the whole world and Nigerians have a right to look for at a time like this in our country. The new President has spoken not like a J.J.C. that I thought he was only yesterday, but like an experienced statesman and master politician to watch.

   

Like all inaugural addresses, the world over, I know the draft must have been crafted for him by a gifted bureaucrat, but all the same, I can see his handwriting and imprimatur on every paragraph of that beautiful speech. As a retired Federal Public Service technocrat and administrator, I can tell a good speech when I see one. This inaugural speech is decidedly one, and I congratulate the new President for the singular effort. I also congratulate Ambassador Kingibe for a job well done. I know Ambassador Kingibe's diction and verbiage and his powerful style. I am also aware of his amazing gift of the garb right from his days in Abacha regime and more so when he became the vice presidential running mate to M.K.O. Kingibe is decidedly one of the best eloquent speakers the North has produced in our generation. Jerry Gana is another and so is the unflappable Abubakar Rimi of Kano. The North has come a long way from the days of Zanar Bukar Dipcharima and Tafawa Balewa the golden voice of Africa. I love them all. I don't know about you. Kingibe is going to do this newly minted president a lot of good, if he continues that way.

   

I think Mr President has put his best foot forward by naming him as the point man for his new Government. He, sure, got that right and I congratulate him for that as well. The mark of good leadership starts and ends with the leader's ability to pick who can best serve, communicate or articulate and execute his policies in a way that the common man can understand and effectively relate to. The President has started very well, and I give him high marks for that speech.

  

The four imperatives he has underscored in the speech as we move forward is, to me, a step in the right direction and his promise to focus, like a laser beam, on reforming our electoral process that make election rigging so attractive and profitable in our country, and his open admission and recognition that the last series of elections including his own does not give the silent majority of our people any confidence in his claim to legitimacy, as the choice of the people.

   

The mere fact that the inaugural formalities and festivities at the Eagle Square reminds one of the kind of security mounted at the UN any time the Cuban Leader, Fidel Castro is in town to speak at the General Assembly, is not a very good omen for a man who says he has just recorded such a landslide victory like the one claimed for him by the outgoing President and his fraudulent INEC Chairman.

 

I agree that it is better to take the precautions of maximum security than be sorry, if the whole ceremony is allowed to degenerate into pandemonium or mayhem and heckling by aggrieved opposition who knew their victories were stolen away from them by force. That would have been more embarrassing than what we witnessed at the ceremony. One way or the other the country has to move forward just like America had to do when it became clear that the man who won the popular vote lost to the man who fell short, but won strangely enough, the majority at the electoral abracadabra favored by the American Constitution..

    

What we had was a terribly flawed elections, and everybody knows it, but our nation has to find some ways to move past it in our best interest. Therefore the assurances by the new President to immediately do something concrete about the observation is something our people ought to fully respect as they give him more time to fulfil his promises.

  

I agree that Mr. President is surely going to have one of the shortest honey moons in our country, and that is the more reason he ought to use that honey moon to gather some IOUs that he can later draw upon when things go ballistic as pundits and commentators try to analyze some of his moves, appointments and actions  as the new comer.

    

Like I warned before in all of my previous articles on his predecessor, if the new president intends to emulate or duplicate some of the modus operandi of Obasanjo, despite his profuse acknowledgment of him as a good leader which is very true in certain respects, but false in a few areas of note, he may find himself in hot water pretty soon. I am happy that he has specifically mentioned the "Rule of Law". His anointer says a lot of things which he never carried out about observing the Rule of Law. If the new President is merely going to pay a lip service to that statement, and do the Obasanjo on Nigeria by doing the opposite, he would soon learn that "Khaki no be leather" like they say in Nigeria..

    

It is true that he is President like Obasanjo, but he lacks Obasanjo's power base, experience and clout as part of the military establishment and that is a biggie in our country. But the new president has something going for him that Obasanjo himself has admitted he totally lacked. Obasanjo has publicly admitted he is crude, impulsive, temperamental  and quite often uncivil and undiplomatic in the way and manner he talks and governs. I don't care what anybody may say about Obasanjo's achievements, he is a bush man as far as I am concerned. He has told us with some validity and accuracy that Umaru Yar Adua is a different kettle of fish. Yar Adua's affect more often than not is flat and it is hard to tell if he is happy or sad, but he is a good listener and he does not see himself as the Messiah in Nigeria.. While that may be a huge disadvantage, it could also be a big plus for him in a country of pander bears like Nigeria where praise singers looking for a way to box in the President, are ever so ready to tell him what they think he wants to hear, even though it may be several miles away from the truth and the reality on the ground.

 

That is an area where a born diplomat and artful dodger like Kingibe could be of great service to the new President as his first sounding board for much of what praise singers are going to be telling him. As a matter of fact, the new president may well learn something from IBB his favorite family mentor who will have a lot of advice for him as he Yar Adua goes into the big League. 

  

I recall IBB at the inception of his Administration appointing Olu Falae of Ondo State as his Secretary to Government more by fluke than by any organized planning like Yar Adua has just done by naming Kingibe to the same powerful position. I would tell you how that came about. When IBB came to power in 1985, himself and his new regime have filled all the powerful and strategic positions in Government without picking a single Cabinet member from Ondo State, the then intellectual center of Nigeria. Can you imagine any American President forgetting to include, in his Cabinet, any candidate from Massachusetts, and her environs as the intellectual center of America? Forget it. That would never happen in America, but it's a different ball game in Nigeria.

   

Ondo State was completely by-passed by IBB and his hatchet men, at the time, because Ondo State was still considered a pariah state in Nigeria because of her loyalty to Awolowo. Successive Federal Government heads in Nigeria starting from Tafawa Balewa to Aguiyi Ironsi, to Yakubu Gowon, to Murtala Mohammed, to Obasanjo to Shehu Shagari and most especially Mohammadu Buhari  have always put the Ondo State on the sideline for that reason. IBB and his new team were only following the same rule of the thumb before some good Samaritans in his Government drew their attention to the oversight.

   

In a rush to correct that mistake they discovered that only the position of Secretary to Government has not been filled. It therefore has to willy nilly go to the best candidate they could find in Ondo State.

  

Three candidates immediately emerged from a short list. The late Asabia of Upele, Owo, the late Theophillus Iwajomo of Okitipupa area, and thru the same Asabia and Professor Sam Aluko  came the suggestion to include Olu Falae who was then Managing Director of the then Nigerian Merchant Bank. Asabia the MD of First Bank at the time voluntarilly dropped his name leaving Iwajomo and Olu Falae. The two names were submitted to IBB through tripple A, Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji, a Prince of the Caliphate and one of the most powerful federal permanent secretaries at the time. Abubakar Alhaji was a former student of Professor Sam Aluko at the London School of Economics. It was thru his influence that Olu Falae, a one time Director of Central Planning, and federal permanent secretary and colleague of "tripple A" finally emerged as the preferred candidate just like that. If you don't believe me, ask Olu Falae. He would tell you it is the truth. 

  

I am recalling this little story to add more credence to my hypothesis that Kingibe may well find himself playing the same role that Olu Falae once played for IBB's regime. I recall in those days that all Ministers reported to the President going thru  Olu Falae who became the most powerful bureaucrat in that Administration. Yar Adua may well learn something from that precedent as the consummate diplomat in Kingibe assumes his office as Secretary to Government. It was thru the wise counsel of Olu Falae that IBB was able to able to win the love and support of the Lion of Ikenne and the undisputed leader of the Yorubas in Obafemi Awolowo.

  

How did that happen? Good question. Olu Falae had crafted the draft of IBB greetings to Chief Obafemi Awolowo on his 76th Birthday, calling the sage, "the great divide in Nigerian Politics. You are either for or against Awolowo". The speech was a masterstroke and a major breakthrough for IBB getting close to Awolowo who decided to throw his weight and that of the core Yorubas behind IBB. The inaugural speech presumably crafted for Yar Adua by Kingibe may well have done the same trick as Nigerians and the International community begin to take a second look at Yar Adua and his new regime. The speech may well signify a positive turning point for Yar Adua, if he remains on track, going forward. That is a prediction.

 

The rest of this write-up would now be devoted to answering how Yar Adua must remain on track? He remains on track, if he retains and improves upon some of the good things Obasanjo has done for our country and jettison some of the bad ones.

   

Obasanjo was President. Nnamani was Senate President and Alhaji Na'aba and later Alhaji Masari was Speaker of the House. That tripod and delicate balance between the North and the South had to be maintained. The new President has to be sensitive to that important balance going forward. A return to the time when the North used to completely dominate Nigeria must never again be allowed to rear its head. How he does it, is totally up to him. The choice of Kingibe from Bornu certainly fits that bill I would argue. The rest of the country would be watching very closely. General David Mark from the Middle Belt Zone is being tipped for Senate President. So far so good. Let's hope the new President will maintain that balance.

  

There is also the decentralization of the Nigerian Military Establishment by Obasanjo through out the six zones of Nigeria. That is an initiative to be retained and consolidated as needed.. But there are a few terrible legacies  that Obasanjo started or ignored that need to be reviewed immediately. Obasanjo's tendency to want to undermine the "Rule of Law when it does not favor him is a tragedy and his nurturing double standards and his sacred cow scenario in oppressing perceived enemies has to be reviewed at once.

     

Obasanjo's tendency and propensity to want to create a Dynasty of his own by abusing his office and using his position to enrich himself and nuclear family and supporters is a bad move that has to be reversed not just by Yar Adua doing a declaration of assets which means nothing, if the Obasanjo's model is anything to go by. It has to be a fundamental change from the past because Obasanjo has tarnished the reputation of the Yorubas in that regard, and some of his actions as President could conceivably be subject to proper investigation by an independent tribunal, regardless of the closeness of Yar Adua to Obasanjo.

   

If Yar Adua is going to be the leader he promises to be in his inaugural speech there is no way he can dismiss this advice with the wave of the hand. Why? Because Obasanjo has sent many Nigerians to jail and disrepute and even to political oblivion and physical death for the same offenses he has committed against the State. That behavior cannot be ignored by a President who says he is out to serve with the fear of God in his heart, I dare say.

 

The last and not the least is the "fons et origo" of Corruption in our country. The terribly flawed provisions in our Military-originated Constitution which says that a President, a Vice president and State Governors and their Deputies cannot be prosecuted for most offenses committed while in office. It was the mother of all mistakes to incorporate such provisions into our Constitution as I argued before, and the new President must immediately sponsor a motion to the House and Senate within his first 100 days in office, calling for the abrogation of those provisions.

  

That Obasanjo would not use his power as leader of a party that controls more than 26 states out of 36 states of Nigeria during his 8 long years in office is one positive proof to me that Obasanjo cannot claim to be fighting Corruption, if he would not do something about those provisions. If he has devoted half the effort he has made to humiliating and presecuting Atiku Abubakar and seeking a third or fourth term in office, to getting those provisions removed, he would have succeeded, and he would have gone down as a hero in my judgment.

  

But then he would not have been able to move from rag to riches by becoming the richest Nigerian while holding public office. If you factor in all the assets standing in his name today through out the nooks and corners of Nigeria, you would have to agree with Wole Soyinka  who calls Obasanjo the most corrupt leader  Nigeria has produced, even worse than Sani Abacha he has tried to criminalize and blackmail beyond redemption.

  

I rest my case.