2023 polls: Congratulating Tinubu tarnishes America’s self-proclaimed commitment to democracy – Chimamanda Adichie tells Joe Biden

Internationally renowned writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has advised US President Joe Biden against congratulating Nigeria’s president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, due to the flawed electoral system.

Adichie’s open letter to Biden, published on Thursday, highlighted various malpractices such as violence, ballot box snatching, voter intimidation, and other irregularities that occurred during the February 25 election to favor the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

She stated that the US congratulating the election tarnishes America’s self-proclaimed commitment to democracy. According to her, the election was not on,y rigged, but was done in a shoddy, shabby manner that insulted the intelligence of Nigerians

She wrote; “Congratulating its (election) 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,” Adichie enjoined the American leader.

“Voters compared their cellphone photos with the uploaded photos and saw alterations: numbers crossed out and rewritten; some originally written in black ink had been rewritten in blue, some blunderingly whited-out with Tipp-Ex,” the writer pointed out.

“The election had been not only rigged, but done in such a shoddy, shabby manner that it insulted the intelligence of Nigerians.”

“It is ironic that many images of altered result sheets showed votes overwhelmingly being transferred from the Labour Party to the APC,” Adichie wrote.

The writer’s letter, on The Atlantic, titled, ‘Nigeria’s Hollow Democracy’ also stated that the Independent National Electoral Commission failed to deliver on its promise to upload election results from polling units in real-time via its result viewing portal.

“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,” the writer recounted the unfortunate experience.