All progressives Congress media chiefs have thrown tantrums on the Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Adichie’s open letter to United States President Joe Biden not to accept the election results that produced Bola Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate, as the ‘winner.’
Festus Keyamo, spokesperson for the All Progressives Congress presidential campaign council, described Chimamanda Adichie’s letter as a reflection of colonial mentality.
The award-winning novelist in the open letter published in The Atlantic said Tinubu’s victory was illegitimate as the process of the February 25 presidential election was not marred by technical faults as claimed by the INEC but a deliberate manipulation by the electoral umpire.
Responding, Nigeria’s Labour Minister, Keyamo described the letter as “long epistles written in flowery or purple prose by bitter supporters of sore losers posing as ‘concerned citizens,’’ in a statement released on his verified Twitter handle on Friday.
The spokesman for the ruling party’s presidential campaign council said, “In global diplomacy and international relations, Presidents of countries make decisions and take actions about other countries’ affairs (albeit within the limits of sovereignty of States in International Law) based on reports from official and diplomatic sources likely to have been conveyed through well-established channels of communications.
“Long epistles written in flowery or purple prose by bitter supporters of sore losers, posing as ‘concerned citizens’ (but in reality actuated by ethnic politics) do not fall within these official or diplomatic sources,” he said.
Continuing, Keyamo noted “It is befuddling that someone often celebrated for using a God-given talent to promote our African values, will so tragically degrade that same ethos by penning a letter that is so petty, so grovelling in its tone in urging a single foreign power to withhold a mere congratulatory message to our President-elect as if that is what actually validates our own democratic identity.
“It reflects a pathetic colonial mentality. It is even more ironic to realise that the same foreign power to which the obsequious appeal is directed is still grappling with the credibility of its own internal democratic process that produced its present leadership.”
Former minister of aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has described the letter written to US President Joe Biden by novelist Chimamanda Adichie as an epistle of garbage.
Adichie had written to question the US for congratulating the winner of the February 25 presidential election, President-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
Reacting, Fani-Kayode described Chimamanda Adichie’s “Hollow democracy” diatribe as a shitty little submission, in a shitty little letter, written by a shitty little diva.
‘‘It was hardly worth my time to read and ordinarily I would not have bothered.
‘‘Like all fecal waste it belongs in one place and one place alone: the bottom of a public toilet.
‘‘We do not need any lessons from this over-rated and Igbocentric new age diva.
“Neither do we need to respond to her self-serving, self-seeking, jaundiced, subjective, partial, primitive, tribal observations and implausible ethno-religious sentiments.
If anyone needs to know that lawlessness has consequences it is her candidate Peter and not the Nigerian people.
And if anything is hollow it is her well-manicured diva head and not our democracy.
“She is not in this league and she would do well to stick to writing fairy tales.
Running to foreign leaders to report your compatriots does not sit well with me no matter what your Uncle Tom credentials may be.
“If you do not have respect for your own people and nation and if you have to go cap in hand to foreigners for validation then you are not worthy of being called a human being let alone a Nigerian.
“Africa has come of age. We do not need to get a congratulatory note from any Western nation before we sleep well at night.
This is not some Hollywood film script or fantasy fairy tale.
“This is about the destiny, future, welfare and fortune of 250 million Nigerian people who deserve to have their place under the sun as a free, progressive and independent nation and not to be treated like some vassal state or an appendage of others.
“What this unpatriotic, hate-filled and overrated little diva has written is nothing but a long-winded, empty, tendentious and boring epistle of dishonest garbage.
“It is a litany of unwholesome mendacities designed to undermine our democracy, impress her global audience and incite her local ‘Obidient’ tribesmen against the Nigerian people and state.
“It is a refection of her low-self esteem and inability to grasp the fact that no nation or people on earth are perfect in all their ways and that the America she is reporting us to is also in many ways questionable and flawed and faced with many challenges.
The little diva is not worthy of much of our attention.
She deserves nothing from us except ridicule, scorn and contempt.
“She should give us a break, spare the world her unsolicited counsel, desist from denigrating her nation from a foreign land, stop reporting Nigeria to her slave masters and, as President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda would say, “go and eat her mother’s something,” Fani-kayode stated.
Also, Bayo Onanuga, media director of the (APC) presidential campaign council, said US President Joe Biden should discard the letter written to him by Chimamanda Adichie.
Addressing allegations of manipulation in the 2023 presidential election, Adichie, the celebrated Nigerian novelist, wrote a long read to Biden on Thursday.
In the letter, the author of Americanah said the presidential election was marred with discrepancies and irregularities which she claims were shunned by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
She said despite the promise of a free and credible election, Mahmood Yakubu, the INEC chairman, “hastily” announced Bola Tinubu of the APC as the winner of the election without investigating reports of irregularities.
Adichie asked Biden to uphold his stance on the need for a true democracy, adding that congratulating Tinubu tarnishes America’s self-proclaimed commitment to democratic processes.
Reacting, Onanuga said Adichie’s letter is “inspired by the loss of her tribesman,” noting that the allegations in the letter are a figment of her imagination.
“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,” Onanuga wrote on Twitter.
The former managing director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) described Adichie’s letter as “tales by the moonlight.”
