VP’s Remarks At Maitama Sule’s Book Launch on 07/09/2017

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An orator is a skilled public speaker, a master of words especially in the use of words to persuade, to exhort, to inspire, to set direction and possibly to create a vision.

Words are of course important, indeed they create or destroy, they edify or humiliate, and words well-spoken can uplift, encourage, and inspire.

But words are also the defining tool of nihilists, traitors, hate merchants, demagogues, and rascals of every kind. In the past few months, we have heard words intended to stoke conflict, to denigrate the ethnicities or faith of others, to divide a great people into several small and weaker parts.

So oratorical genius like all forms of genius, is not in and of itself a virtue, the character and motivations of the man or woman behind the orator is then what is crucial.

Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule, Damasanin Kano, was an exceptionally gifted orator, but his greatness was not in the gift of oratory. It was in the exceptional character that undergirded that gift.