Dr Toks Oguntuga
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s second anniversary address, titled “We Have Made Undeniable Progress”, unfurled like a banner of triumph over the turbulent winds of national despair.
Yet, beneath its gilded rhetoric lies a carefully orchestrated pageant of political symbolism, economic self-congratulation, and strategic silence. As a specimen of presidential crisis rhetoric, the speech is both a textbook of Aristotelian strategy and a masterclass in the artful dodging of hard truths.
Before delving into the Aristotelian strategy employed, I must confess the length of the speech was a put-off for me. At nearly 3,000 words, President Tinubu’s second anniversary speech drowns in its own verbosity. Rather than wielding brevity as a scalpel, it sprawls like a policy prospectus read aloud; technocratic, exhaustive, and emotionally inert. The speech attempts to do everything at once: appease, impress, justify, and preempt criticism. But in its quest for comprehensiveness, it sacrifices coherence. Bereft of narrative elegance, rhetorical pacing, or human touch, the address reads less like a message to the nation and more like a memo to the World Bank. In a season demanding clarity, empathy, and strategic reassurance, the president delivered a verbal marathon, impressive in endurance but forgettable in impact. Now to the rhetorical strategy deployed in the president’s speech.
Ethos: The Redeemer Persona and the “Man of Destiny” Myth
From the opening note, Tinubu cloaks himself in the garb of a providential saviour, cast not merely as a political leader but as the sacrificial custodian of Nigeria’s battered soul. His rhetorical construction of ethos is anchored in the mythology of burden-bearing: “You entrusted me with the sacred responsibility to lead our nation at a time of historic challenges.” Here, Tinubu does not merely lead, he redeems; he does not merely govern, he rescues.
This moral heroism, reminiscent of classical Greek hubris-tinged protagonists, gives him the latitude to rationalise the national suffering birthed by his reforms. His self-presentation is saturated with sacrificial nobility, evoking the imagery of a phoenix rising from the fiscal ashes of subsidy and FOREX decay. The subtext: “I did what others feared to do, so Nigeria may live.” It is ethos weaponised with divine sanction.
Logos: A Rhapsody of Statistics and the Alchemy of Selective Arithmetic
Tinubu’s deployment of logos is a surgical strike of statistical theatre. A blizzard of percentages, revenue figures, and economic jargon is unleashed to stupefy rather than enlighten. Consider: “Real GDP rose by 4.6% in Q4 2024,” or “our net external reserves grew from $4 billion to $23 billion.” These figures are not contextualized in the lived realities of ordinary Nigerians but stand as monolithic markers of progress in a vacuum – economic cathedrals built on shifting sands.
The speech is also laden with what might be termed rhetorical benchmarking, an appeal to relative improvement over historical abyss. By contrasting present metrics with past decay, Tinubu performs the political alchemy of transforming hardship into heroism. But this logos is one-sided: the rising cost of living, the low purchasing power of Nigerians, and the resurgence of Boko Haram are not dissected with the same mathematical fervor. In the economy of rhetoric, what is unsaid often screams louder than what is said.
Pathos: The Strategic Deployment of Sentimentality
Perhaps the most calculated stroke of this speech lies in its invocation of pathos. Tinubu artfully evokes the resilience of the Nigerian people, repeatedly addressing them as co-sufferers and co-visionaries. This rhetorical equalization—“Together, we have faced these headwinds with courage and determination”—softens the sting of reform by diffusing accountability. The pain becomes a national baptism by fire, not the burden of governmental miscalculation.
Where emotions are summoned, they are laser-targeted: the salute to soldiers, the maternal health initiative, the image of rescued abductees—all curated vignettes aimed at stirring national pride and momentary amnesia. It is not simply the emotional that is invoked; it is the cinematic.
The “Necessity Trap”: Justifying Pain with Prophetic Certainty
A dominant rhetorical strategy in the speech is what may be termed the necessity trap, the framing of reforms as painful but inevitable, akin to bitter medicine administered to a dying patient. “The only alternative was a fiscal crisis… an economy in free-fall,” Tinubu argues. This apocalyptic framing flattens nuance and demonises dissent: to question the reforms is to invite economic Armageddon.
This technique draws heavily on Aristotelian apologia and preemptive justification. It is a speech designed not to confess fault, but to canonise necessity.
The Renewed Hope Agenda as a Metanarrative
Like a political scripture, the Renewed Hope Agenda is invoked as a binding national creed. Its repetition (nauseating if you ask me) transforms it from a policy into a theology, one that citizens must believe in to endure their present suffering. Hope here is not a promise of change tomorrow, but a sedative for today’s pain.
This invocation of hope without apology allows Tinubu to sidestep one of the cardinal expectations of democratic leadership: accountability. The speech never for once attempted to absolve government of continued profligacy while selling hope to the citizenry. Instead, Tinubu opts for gratitude: “We do not take your patience for granted.” This is a sterile, bureaucratic thank-you where an apology ought to reside. The speech baptises the government’s every action as part of a divine, upward-spiralling plan. The result is rhetorical fatalism wrapped in optimism.
Rhetoric Without Resonance
There was little evidence of strategic audience mapping. The address was laden with statistics, acronyms, and a litany of reforms, but it lacked human stories, metaphors, or symbols that resonate with the Nigerian street or marketplace or youth population. It was a speech unmoored from the socio-emotional realities of its listeners. In a country dominated by a predominantly young population with high expectations from the president, I doubt if the president’s speech resonated with them one bit.
Conclusion: A Study in Presidential Rhetorical Sophistry
President Tinubu’s second anniversary address is a symphony of classical rhetoric, strategic evasion, and emotional manipulation. It soars with emotionless statistics, unrelatable claims, and choreographed optimism but it fails to descend into the trenches of empathy, humility, or radical transparency. It is less a conversation with the governed than a broadcast from Olympus.
The speech, in my opinion, will no doubt be remembered, not as a moment of candour, but as an artefact of presidential self-legitimation, wherein the claim of progress is deployed to tranquillise a nation gasping for clarity, direction, and relief.
I therefore posit, this is not merely rhetoric, it is presidential sophistry in full regalia.
