Bayo Onanuga, media aide to president-elect Bola Tinubu, has urged the president of the United State, Joe Biden to ignore the letter addressed to him by renowned Nigerian author, Chimamanda Adichie.
Adichie’s letter, which was titled Nigeria’s Hollowed Democracy and published on The Atlantic, had questioned why Americans congratulated Tinubu as president-elect, despite the “disastrous February 25th Presidential election”.
“Many Nigerians went out to vote holding in their hearts a new sense of trust. Cautious trust, but still trust.
“Obidients is most repulsive, off-putting concoction I have encountered” – Wole Soyinka
“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, especially among young people. The discontent, the despair, the tension in the air have not been this palpable in years,” Adichie’s letter read in part.
Reacting to the letter, Onanuga described it as fictitious, urging Biden to ignore it.
He tweeted: “Dear President Joe Biden, please just trash the open letter by Chimamanda on Nigeria’s election once it gets to your desk. She wrote fiction, inspired by the monumental loss of her tribesman Peter Obi.”
