Chimamanda wrote fiction, inspired by her Igbo tribesman Obi’s loss; Biden should trash letter: Bayo Onanuga

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“Dear President Joe Biden, please just trash the open letter by Chimamanda on Nigeria’s election once it gets to your desk,” Mr Onanuga stated.

Bayo Onanuga, the spokesman for President-elect Bola Tinubu, has urged U.S. President Joe Biden to trash Chimamanda Adichie’s open letter requesting the American leader to hold off on congratulating Mr Tinubu as Nigeria’s next president, as doing so could legitimise what she described as an “illegitimate process” that led to his victory.

According to Mr Onanuga, Ms Adichie’s open letter to the U.S. president is based on ethnic sympathy and fiction.

“Congratulating its (election) outcome, President Biden tarnishes America’s self-proclaimed commitment to democracy,” Ms Adichie, a celebrated Nigerian author, said in a letter titled ‘Nigeria’s Hollow Democracy’ published in The Atlantic on Thursday. 

Reacting to Ms Adichie’s letter on Thursday in a tweet, Mr Onanuga urged the U.S. president to “trash” the letter, which he described as “fiction.” 

“Dear President Joe Biden, please just trash the open letter by Chimamanda on Nigeria’s election once it gets to your desk,” Mr Onanuga stated.

The APC propagandist added, “She wrote fiction, inspired by the monumental loss of her tribesman Peter Obi.” 

Ms Adichie cautioned the U.S. leader against toeing the path of his UK counterpart, Rishi Sunak, who had rushed to congratulate Mr Tinubu, stressing that “the battle for influence in Africa will not be won by supporting the same undemocratic processes for which China is criticised.”

Foreign experts, including retired American diplomat Johnnie Carson, also welcomed Mr Tinubu’s victory, saying he put in the resources and groundwork to attain history.

Still, Mr Carson said the election that produced Mr Tinubu could have been better conducted.

“To me, the problem is not with Tinubu and the other candidates,” he said. “Nigeria deserves the very best electoral process.”

Leading opposition parties, Labour and PDP, have filed petitions against Mr Tinubu’s election in court in a tedious proceeding that should get to the Supreme Court in eight months.

In case you missed the letter, here it is below;

Chimamanda Adichie Writes Open Letter to President Biden, About “Nigeria’s Hollow Democracy”

Today The Atlantic is publishing an open letter to President Joe Biden from the acclaimed Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie. In the letter, “Nigeria’s Hollow Democracy,” Adichie confronts the question of why Americans keep congratulating the winner of Nigeria’s disastrous election in February.

Following the passage of the 2022 Electoral Act in Nigeria, which gave legal backing to the vote-counting process, “something remarkable happened on the morning of February 25, the day of the Nigerian presidential election,” Adichie writes. “Many Nigerians went out to vote holding in their hearts a new sense of trust. Cautious trust, but still trust.” What followed was a breach of that trust, when on February 26 social media became flooded with evidence of voting irregularities: “numbers crossed out and rewritten; some originally written in black ink had been rewritten in blue, some blunderingly whited-out with Tipp-Ex. The election had been not only rigged, but done in such a shoddy, shabby manner that it insulted the intelligence of Nigerians.”

The ruling party’s candidate, Bola Tinubu, was eventually announced as the president-elect of Nigeria. “Rage is brewing,” Adichie writes, “especially among young people. The discontent, the despair, the tension in the air have not been this palpable in years.”

Adichie questions the U.S. State Department’s response in congratulating Tinubu and accepting the election results: “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.” To Biden, Adichie writes: “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?”

Adichie concludes: “Congratulating [the election’s] outcome, President Biden, tarnishes America’s self-proclaimed commitment to democracy. Please do not give the sheen of legitimacy to an illegitimate process. The United States should be what it says it is.”

Chimamanda Adichie’s full letter, “Nigeria’s Hollow Democracy,” is online today at TheAtlantic.com.

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