AS inaugural speeches go, President Muhammadu Buhari’s presentation achieved a lot through sand bites that sketched the strands of change while stretching responsibilities change entails. It was a great speech in more ways than a literary exchange. It was a feast of words, an enterprise in creating hope, a labour in extricating change from chaos.

Where Nigeria is, simple sufferings heighten the expectations of change. The fuel scarcity of the past few weeks reminds us of the political crisis of decades ago, when strikes were thrown into demands for change. Today, the realities of change are different, even diffident.

All aspects of us await change. Buhari tried itemising the immediate demands of change. It was a necessary exercise to give a hint about the direction of the administration. It was not discernible. The carriers of change are lost in a labyrinth of words that will be remembered more for its import for Buhari’s young administration than as a compass for its journey that is filled with expectations of the dividends of change.

Buhari for his own good and commendably too, has ceased to be belligerent. His speech brought rare grace to the office, accommodating the efforts of others, including his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. It seems Buhari’s would be an inclusive government, if it intends to seek broad solutions to Nigeria’s challenges.

Away from the fiery campaigns that painted bold strokes of solutions to the challenges, Buhari was more reticent, speaking in broader terms than the bolder offerings of the campaigns. Specific deadlines in his campaigns for welfare programmes for the unemployed disappeared. In their place were more coherent stands that the responsibility for change was everybody’s.

Some have rated the speech vague on this score. They expected specifics. They wanted things to grab as they grapple with a new government. They were interested on points with which to judge Buhari, for judgment surely awaits change. The speech appeared to have cleverly avoided specifics.

Perhaps, these account for everyone clinging to its most resonating line, “I belong to everybody. I belong to nobody”. Buhari did not want to be elaborate about issues of independence of his government or his personal determination to run on his own. If he intended to douse fears that sponsors of change would not decide the course of change, he succeeded in heightening fears of his naivety about practicalities of democratic governance.

Buhari belongs to an enlarged family of political associates, military colleagues, classmates who have discovered him and new friends who always await men of power. The earlier he identifies the demands of each on his administration, the earlier he would be able to belong to everybody.