A political speech is to inform the audience, seek facts from people to enrich the political leader’s information bank, or persuade people to accept the political leaders’ views on some issues. Hence, a political speech is expected to appeal, neutralize, persuade, elaborate, educate, control, regulate, and inform the masses. In essence, political speeches are laden with various linguistic features. The author examines the linguistic features (as espoused in lexical cohesion) of the first inaugural speech of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo. The method used for this study contains sampling and reading the selected inaugural presidential speech. The lexical features are repetition, synonym, antonym, hyponymy, and collocation. The author uses discourse analysis to drive home her point. The findings reveal that President Olusegun Obasanjo made much use of repetition. In essence, politicians emphasize words showing that the electorate or audience is more convinced when ideas are repeated. Synonym came closely to repetition.
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