---

This book examines lexical cohesion in the inaugural speeches of Presidents: Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Umaru M. Yar´adua. Cohesion plays an important role in text production. In fact cohesion expresses the continuity between one part of the sentence and the other; thereby showing points of contact. The study adopts the cohesive harmony analysis theory by Halliday (1985) and chain interaction theory by Hasan (1984). Using Halliday´s (1985) theory, the three speeches were analysed under the categories of repetition, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, semblance, identity and equivalence; while chain interaction was examined under the categories of actor - process, actor - process - goal, actor - process - location, senser - process - phenomenon, sayer - process - target and epithet - thing chains. Data has been interpreted statistically for easy analysis and each statistical table carries a brief highlight of the contents within the table. The findings reveal that though all the speeches are coherent, the most coherent is Obasanjo´s speech, followed by Babangida´s speech and finally Yar´adua. The target group are young researchers probing into inuagural presidential speech.

---

Hauwa G. Ali, B.A. English University of Maiduguri, 1987. M.A English Language Bayero University Kano, 1992 and presently Ph.D Sylistics (Lexical Cohesion) University of Maiduguri, 2016. I have been lecturing in the Department of English, University of Maiduguri from 1990 till Date. University of Maiduguri is presently my employer.

---