By Charles Ike-Okoh
THUR, 01 OCT, 2020-theGBJournal-President Muhammadu Buhari delivered his Independence speech today, not from the Eagle Square as earlier promised but from the cosy confines of the State House, Aso Rock, Abuja.
Profoundly coated in appeal for unity, the message to the nation touched on almost everything including the reality of the thin-thread that still binds the country together.
In many ways the speech is well prepared but it is also hard to argue that it met the expectations of the populace who yearn for something different, something new. It was also full of repetitive lines around the singular theme of the speech-‘’TOGETHERNESS’’.
However, the President did well enough to focus the discussion on what the citizens-the leaders and the led-have been doing rightly or wrongly, and beyond the rhetoric, there were some key takeaways the citizens could draw from the speech.
The President was contrite about the ‘’mistake’’ that strung the diverse ethnic groups together into the entity called Nigeria today. The diversity is the first thing he called out. But it is the opportunity in the diversity that he sees first. The diversity underlines the spectre of political risk in the country’s nascent democracy. For stakeholders who backed Nigeria, the ‘’largest and greatest black nation on earth,’’ where the abundance of natural resources are never in doubt, their calculations have been sorely tested for 60 years now. But the President believes the country can work and can be reshaped into a better entity if ‘’we got TOGETHER to get to where we aspire to be as a strong indivisible nation, united in hope and equal in opportunity.’’
The president knows the underlying cause of the nation’s many problems. But to many country watchers, he has waited too long to acknowledge it and to do something about it. But he has now acknowledged that there is a fundamental structural problem. He traces its origin to the 30-months of civil war that ended in 1970, which he suggests has thrown up an artificially contrived fault-lines ‘’that we have harboured and allowed to unnecessarily to fester.’’
He knows what we need to do about the problems. ‘’We need to begin a sincere process of national healing,’’ the President’s answer. He says ‘’the stereotype of thinking of ourselves as coming from one part of the country before seeing ourselves as Nigerians is a key starting point to project us on the road to our deserved nation’s evolution and integration.’’
The President says his administration is laying a foundation for a solid future. Is he? This claim is could possibly have been the President’s strongest moments. But he failed to build on it or tell how his administration is doing just that. He had spoken earlier of institutions such as the civil service, the Police, the Judiciary and the military which has all suffered decline. He did not speak of how he could make them great again or what he has done to begin the process of rebuilding them. He only called for a ‘’collective commitment by Nigerians to sustain the foundation.
The President is changing the anti-political culture in the country. That he emphasised with the outcome of the September governorship election in Edo State, Nigeria. Even his critics acknowledge that.
‘’The recent build-up and eventual outcome of the Edo State elections should encourage Nigerians that it is my commitment to bequeath to this country processes and procedures that would guarantee that people’s votes count,’’ the President said. ‘’The problems with our electoral process are mainly human induced as desperate desire for power leads to desperate attempts to gain power and office.’’
Profoundly put. But it should have read more bluntly like- the processes are frequently prone to human rights abuse, corruption and political exploitations as well as entrenched patronage, godfatherism and corrupt election officials, including ethic division and authoritarianism.
But it is still one of the most memorable lines in the near boring speech this morning-for those who tuned in.
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