- By Halimah Olamide
Popular Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie, has expressed disappointment over the United States government’s congratulatory message to the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
In a letter addressed to the US President, Joe Biden, Chimamanda called the Nigerian democracy “Hollow.” In what appeared her anger against the outcome of the February 25 presidential election, the novelist, who had earned the commendations of the Nigerian governments in the past for her writings and laurels, said the election that produced Tinubu was fraught with irregularities. NPO Reports recalls that Chimamanda is a backer of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi. Obi came third in the election.
In the letter which was published by The Atlantic titled “Nigeria’s Hollow Democracy: Why is America congratulating the winner of this disastrous election?” she the Independent National Electoral Commission, the body saddled with conducting the polls, had disappointed many Nigerians in spite of many promises to do justice especially with the Electoral Act which she said was placed at the commission’s advantage to do a credible exercise.
“Most egregious of all, the electoral commission reneged on its assurance to Nigerians. The presidential results were notuploaded in real time. Voters, understandably suspicious, reacted; videos from polling stations show voters shouting that results be uploaded right away. Many took cellphone photos of the result sheets. Curiously, many polling units were able to upload the results of the House and Senate elections, but not the presidential election.
“A relative who voted in Lagos told me, “We refused to leave the polling unit until the INEC staff uploaded the presidential result. The poor guy kept trying and kept getting an ‘error’ message. There was no network problem. I had internet on my phone. My bank app was working. The Senate and House results were easily uploaded. So why couldn’t the presidential results be uploaded on the same system?” Some electoral workers in polling units claimed that they could not upload results because they didn’t have a password, an excuse that voters understood to be subterfuge. By the end of the day, it had become obvious that something was terribly amiss,” she wrote in her letter to Biden.
Charging at the US Government, Chimamanda said “American intelligence surely cannot be so inept. A little homework and they would know what is manifestly obvious to me and so many others: The process was imperiled not by technical shortcomings but by deliberate manipulation.”
She berated The Washington Post and the government for what she termed a complimentary role in passing the Nigerian election as acceptable.
She wrote, “An editorial inThe Washington Postechoed the State Department in intent if not in affect. In an oddly infantilizing tone, as though intended to mollify the simpleminded, we are told that “officials have asserted that technical glitches, not sabotage, were the issue,” that “much good” came from the Nigerian elections, which are worth celebrating because, among other things, “no one hasblocked highways, as happened in Brazil after Jair Bolsonaro lost his reelection bid.” We are also told that “it is encouraging, first, that the losing candidates are pursuing their claimsthrough the courts,” though any casual observer of Nigerian politics would know that courts are the usual recourse after any election.”
She described the editorial as carrying what she called “the imaginative poverty so characteristic of international coverage of African issues—no reading of the country’s mood, no nuance or texture.”
Going further in her treatise, she stated, “But its intellectual laziness, unusual in such a rigorous newspaper, is astonishing. Since when does a respected paper unequivocally ascribe to benign malfunction something that may very well be malignant—just because government officials say so? There is a kind of cordial condescension in both the State Department’s andThe Washington Post’s responses to the election. That the bar for what is acceptable has been so lowered can only be read as contempt.”
Directing her query to Biden, Chimamanda enthused, “I hope, President Biden, that you do not personally share this cordial condescension. You have spoken of the importance of a “global community for democracy,” and the need to stand up for “justice and the rule of law.” A global community for democracy cannot thrive in the face of apathy from its most powerful member. Why would the United States, which prioritizes the rule of law, endorse a president-elect who has emerged from an unlawful process?”