Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Journalist confirms US government to officially respond to chief Chimamanda Adichie open letter after Easter break. (Read More Here).
Benjamin Mayor wrote: “US government to officially respond to chief @ChimamandaReal letter after Easter break. @fkeyamo @realFFK @officialABAT brace yourself for this breakfast. US is dedicated to the sustainability of democracy in Nigeria & will do anything to cooperate with judicial system.”
Internationally acclaimed writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has slammed the US State Department for congratulating Nigeria’s president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, despite a flawed electoral process.
In an open letter to President of the United States, Joe Biden, Adichie referenced reports of widespread violence, ballot box snatching, voter’s intimidation, and other malpractices which marred the February 25 poll.
The author also stated in The Atlantic article published on Thursday 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.
Quoting Ned Price, the spokesperson for the US State Department, Chimamanda noted that the congratulatory statement itself mentioned that Nigerians were frustrated at the “manner in which the process was conducted and the shortcomings of technical elements that were used for the first time in a presidential election cycle”.
“Elections would be rigged because elections were always rigged; the question was how badly. Sometimes voting felt like an inconsequential gesture as predetermined “winners” were announced.
“A law passed last year, the 2022 Electoral Act, changed everything. It gave legal backing to the electronic accreditation of voters and the electronic transmission of results, in a process determined by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
She said the election was full of discrepancies and irregularities which were all shunned by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“Since the end of military rule in 1999, Nigerians have had little confidence in elections. To vote in a presidential election was to brace yourself for the inevitable aftermath: fraud,” she wrote in the letter published on Thursday.
“The chair of the commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, assured Nigerians that votes would be counted in the presence of voters and recorded in a result sheet and that a photo of the signed sheet would immediately be uploaded to a secure server.
“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 said.
“It seemed truly perplexing that, in the context of a closely contested election in a low-trust society, the electoral commission would ignore so many glaring red flags in its rush to announce a winner.
“(It had the power to pause vote counting, to investigate irregularities—as it would do in the governorship elections two weeks later.)”
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