Delivered at State House, Lagos on 16 November 1960 — six weeks after Independence — on the occasion of Azikiwe's swearing-in as the first indigenous Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief of the Federation of Nigeria, succeeding Sir James Robertson. The address has been remembered in the historiography by its central theme: respect for human dignity as the constitutional and moral foundation of the new African state.
Azikiwe used the platform to argue that political independence without an enthroned respect for the dignity of the human person — across race, religion and region — would not amount to true sovereignty. He set out four governing themes: (i) the rejection of all forms of racial and tribal discrimination, expressly committing Nigeria to a non-racial foreign policy and to the dismantling of apartheid in Southern Africa; (ii) the duty of the new state to expand education, public health and economic opportunity as preconditions for dignity; (iii) the role of the Crown-derived Governor-Generalship as a non-partisan, unifying office above the parties; and (iv) a Pan-African creed under which Nigeria's strength would be measured by the freedom of every other African territory.
The full text was issued as an official pamphlet by the Government Printer, Lagos, in 1960 and is held by the Library of Congress (LCCN 2008700237) and the University of Kansas Africana Collection. A clean transcript is not yet available online; this archive is still seeking permission to publish the pamphlet in full.