PREMIUM TIMES NG
Dele Alake, the special adviser on communications to the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, has responded to the letter written by Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Adichie, to President Joe Biden of the US, on the 2023 presidential election.
Mr Alake, in a statement titled; “Chimamanda-Nigeria’s positively growing democracy,” said Ms Adichie deployed falsehood and lack of understanding of the issues in the letter she published in The Atlantic magazine.
Background
PREMIUM TIMES reported that Ms Adichie, in an open letter to Mr Biden, criticised the US government for congratulating Bola Tinubu on his victory at the poll.
The international acclaimed novelist who supported Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) during the 25 February presidential election, claimed the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) could not have won the election if “results had been uploaded in real-time to the INEC portal.”
Mr Tinubu of the APC polled a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat his closest challenger, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who scored a total of 6,984,520 votes. The Labour Party (LP) candidate, Peter Obi came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
Altogether 18 candidates contested the presidential election.
Despite the rejection of the outcome of the poll by Messrs Obi, Atiku and some other parties, several countries including the US have congratulated Mr Tinubu for his victory.
Brilliance provides no immunity against prejudice — Alake
Mr Alake said Mrs Adichie relied on “rumours, hearsay, presumptuous conjectures and outright falsehood” in her letter, adding that she did not provide any evidence to back her claims.
He noted that Mrs Adichie also based her opinion on the outcome of the election on “flawed opinion polls” conducted before the 25 February election.
“Chimamanda had pinned her hopes on a possible Obi victory partly on predictions of flawed opinion polls some of which were predicated on statistically negligible and thus unreliable sample sizes and others on no discernible empirical basis whatsoever. Opinion polls do not win elections,” he said.
Furthermore, Mr Alake questioned Mrs Adichie’s knowledge of Nigeria’s electoral laws and the role of technology in the last election.
“Chimamanda betrays her ignorance of Nigerian politics and unwittingly misled her readers,” he stated.
Read Mr Alake’s full statement
CHIMAMANDA – NIGERIA’s POSITIVELY GROWING DEMOCRACY
By Dele Alake
The noted and internationally acclaimed Nigerian novelist and essayist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, deserves a great deal of pity and sympathy for her so utterly biased piece titled ‘Nigeria’s hollow democracy’ published in the latest edition of ‘The Atlantic’ magazine. It is a piece that does little credit to the image and reputation of a leading Nigerian thinker who ought to be a voice of truth and reason in a time when passions run high and truth is almost indistinguishable from falsehood, in a situation in which many people are heavily emotionally invested in an election which, unfortunately, has not gone the way they expected. But that is the often difficult to anticipate way of elections in liberal democracies at varying levels of development. Chimamanda’s piece is a sad reminder that the possession of brilliance and high intellect by an individual provides no immunity against prejudice, bias and bigotry albeit disguised in the deceptive garb of elevated and high minded discourse.
