Dele Alake, who serves as President-elect Bola Tinubu's Special Communications Advisor, responded to Chimamanda Adichie's open letter to US President Joe Biden

 

Dele Alake, who serves as President-elect Bola Tinubu's Special Communications Advisor, responded to Chimamanda Adichie's open letter to US President Joe Biden in which she questioned the timing of his congratulations to Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

In the letter, Chimamanda referred to Nigeria's democracy as hollow, insisted that the election for president in 2023 was tainted by a variety of irregularities, and questioned why the US President would congratulate the winner.

Her letter has sparked responses from everyone.

 Alake argued that, in contrast to Chimamanda's accusations, democracy is prospering in Nigeria in his response to her letter. He referred to the renowned author as a "unrepentant Igbo jingoist" who backed Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, solely because he is Igbo. He added that Obi would not have won the polls because of his ethnicity and religious campaigning.

 According to Alake, the fact that Obi lost the election does not render Nigeria's democracy ineffective.

He responds with

‘’For her blatantly prejudiced essay, "Nigeria's hollow democracy," which was published in the most recent issue of "The Atlantic" magazine, recognized and widely acclaimed Nigerian novelist and essayist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie deserves a great lot of sympathy.

It is a piece that does little to uphold the image and reputation of a prominent Nigerian thinker who ought to be a voice of reason and truth in a time when emotions are high and the line between the two is often blurred, when many people have strong emotional attachments to an election that, regrettably, did not turn out as they had hoped. But that is the frequently unpredictable way that elections are conducted in liberal democracies with varied degrees of development.

The article by Chimamanda serves as a sobering reminder that intelligence and genius do not provide immunity from prejudice, racism, and bigotry, even when they are covered up in the pretense of elevated and lofty discourse.