President
Muhammadu Buhari may have run into another problem, this time around, his
speech writers have pushed him into a pit of plagiarism, an intellectual crime
in the academic community.
Google Search states; PLAGIARISM
is the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as
one's own.
synonyms:
|
informalcribbing
"accusations of
plagiarism"
|
In his
much-criticized speech last on September 8 as he launched
the ‘reorientation’ campaign in Abuja, President Buhari was
accused of quoting from President Barack Obama’s victorious speech on November
4, 2008 without attributing the quote to him.
The crime:
“We must
resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship, pettiness and
immaturity that have poisoned our country for so long. Let us summon a new
spirit of responsibility, spirit of service, of patriotism and sacrifice, Let
us all resolve to pitch in and work hard and look after, not only ourselves but
one another.
“What the
current problem has taught us is that we cannot have a thriving army of rent
seekers and vested interests, while the majority suffers.”
The source:
“Let’s
resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and
immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.
“So let us
summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves
to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.
“Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that
we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.”
It was Adeola
Akinremi, a columnist with ThisDay, who discovered the blunder and made it
known in his column. His words;
“President
Muhammadu Buhari made a terrible mistake last Thursday. He plagiarized
President Barack Obama’s speech to launch ‘change begins with me,'” he wrote in his column.
“So you
didn’t notice that our president lifted from Obama’s 2008 victory speech and
passed it off as if the words were his own?
“The
argument will rage, but the moral problem of plagiarism on a day Mr. President
launched a campaign to demand honesty and integrity from the people is what we
should concern ourselves with.
“I’m not a
wailing wailer and I don’t like the downfall of any man but I also don’t like
to be deceived. The very last thing you should do when you’re launching a
campaign like this is to be dishonest with the people.
“As Buhari
talked down on Nigerians during the launch of the campaign spearheaded by no
other person, other than the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Muhammed,
known for his trash-talk, particularly for the opposition, I started following
the speech line-by-line.
“I was
alarmed to make the discovery. It was a scandal that escaped the attention of
our newspapers. It is one of two things: either people don’t pay particular
attention to Buhari’s words or we are a nation of anything goes.”
The
paragraph alleged to have been lifted by Buhari read: “We must resist the
temptation to fall back on the same partisanship, pettiness and immaturity that
have poisoned our country for so long.
“Let us
summon a new spirit of responsibility, spirit of service, of patriotism and
sacrifice, Let us all resolve to pitch in and work hard and look after, not
only ourselves but one another, What the current problem has taught us is that
we cannot have a thriving army of rent seekers and vested interests, while the
majority suffers.”
Obama’s words
read thus: “In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people.
Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness
and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.
“So let us
summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves
to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each
other. Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything,
it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.”
According
to him, “When you use another person’s work without acknowledgement, you
have plagiarized. You simply pretend as if it is your own. It is unethical. It
makes a mess of the campaign from the start. That is what Buhari has done,
nobody will believe in the ‘change begins with me’ campaign, because it was
built on lies.
“Now, this
is what I think must have happened, an incompetent speech writer handed the
speech to Buhari with no fact checking method by the president’s men that
should have saved the president from this embarrassment.
“I know
this that with the vast opportunity provided by the internet, it’s so tempting
to plagiarize, but the same internet provides opportunity to discover
plagiarists.
“It’s
particularly troubling that the president has no inspiring words of his own
other than to steal from someone. And this, it is pathetic that this
“change” conversation is taking new dimension from what we expected.”
Read The Premium Times and The Cable for additional reports.
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