Dele Alake who is the Special Adviser on Communications to President-elect Bola Tinubu, has reacted to the open letter Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie wrote to US President Joe Biden, questioning his congratulatory message to President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Dele Alake who is the Special Adviser on Communications to President-elect Bola Tinubu, has reacted to the open letter Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie wrote to US President Joe Biden, questioning his congratulatory message to President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Chimamanda had in the letter described Nigeria’s democracy as hollow, insisting the 2023 presidential election was flawed by a number of irregularities and wondered why the US President would congratulate the president-elect.
Her letter has elicited reactions from all and sundry.
In his rebuttal to Chimamanda’s letter, Alake insisted democracy in Nigeria is thriving, contrary to Chimamanda’s claims. He described the celebrated author as an “unrepentant Igbo jingoist,” who supported the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, just because he is Igbo. He also argued that Obi campaigned on the basis of religion and ethnicity and would never have won the elections.
Alake stated that because Obi did not win the election does not make Nigeria’s democracy hollow.
His rebuttal reads
‘’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.”
