2023 Polls: Chimamanda Adichie Returns With Another Blow On Buhari, INEC

Award winning writer and renowned novelist, Chimamanda Adichie has maintained her earlier stance about the conduct and outcome of the 2023 general  and the electoral umpire, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

According to her, President Muhammadu Buhari and the Chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, blew the chance to emerge the new heroes of Nigeria’s fledgling democracy.

Adichie spoke on Tuesday in an interview with Arise Television.

Adichie maintained that INEC’s excuse that there were technical glitches in real-time uploading of presidential election results was unbelievable, insisting that it was done on purpose to manipulate the outcome of the election.

She pointed out that one of the most glaring evidences of the manipulation of the poll were mutilated election sheets and polling units agents publicly speaking about how results from the polling units were different from official announcements.

 “It was not about technical glitches. Can we also realise that Nigeria is full of very bright young people in tech. There’s no reason for that excuse of technical glitch. And the other question then is, if it was a technical glitch, why was it possible for most people to upload the results of the other federal elections, but not the presidential?

“And I think most of all, is that there’s just been this resounding, unfortunate silence from INEC and from the chairman of INEC. I think Nigerians deserve the respect of an institution that’s supposed to shepherd their democracy. So nobody has come out to explain to Nigerians how that happened.

“There’s a statement about technical glitches that is not convincing. And knowing how much hope and trust that Nigerians invested in this election, knowing that Nigeria is a low trust society,  I think that if people really are sincere and there’s really nothing to hide, then you make an extra effort to go out and explain to Nigerians what happened,” she argued.

Adichie had come under heavy criticism, especially from supporters of the president-elect, Mr Bola Tinubu, after she wrote a letter to the American President, Joe Biden, advising him not to congratulate the All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain because the process that produced him was deeply flawed.

The 45-year-old author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, among other globally acclaimed novels, explained that those who were attacking him were deflecting focus from the real issues she raised and attributing her action to tribalism and ethnicity.

She posited that she did not support Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) because he’s Igbo but because of his record of performance, especially his love for education.

Adichie pointed out that she had never been fazed by criticism, insisting that she wrote Biden knowing full well that there will be criticism from certain quarters.

She posited that the rigging of the poll started when Nigerians, including herself, who wanted and fought hard to collect their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs),  were frustrated from doing so.

 “I tried very hard because I had been assured that technology would save us… and we should also talk about how difficult it was to collect PVCs and how that in itself is a form of voter disenfranchisement,” she opined.

 Doubling down on her criticism of the INEC chairman, Adichie, a 2008 McArthur Fellow, argued that having not uploaded the results immediately, INEC totally lost credibility in the eyes of Nigerians.

“We can’t see them in real time. We cannot see them as Prof. Yakubu Mahmood said. He said I’m going to put it there… I read several times that the public will be able to view that polling unit results as soon as elections are finalised on election day.

“The Electoral Act says that INEC was given the legal backing to have electronic transmission of results and did say in a format that INEC  decides. We know that format, because the chair of INEC told us what the format would be when he said that the results will be uploaded at the end of voting from the polling units. And that was not done,” she argued.

Adichie urged her detractors  to point out what was untrue in the letter she wrote, explaining that since a vacuum had been left by the authorities, people will try to fill that gap, stressing that she wasn’t apprehensive about any lawsuits against her.

On the allegation that she was supporting Obi because of his Igbo origin, she said:  “tribesman is such an outdated and strange expression, which I think also says something about whoever is using it. I think that that kind of accusation is  a practice of what psychologists call projecting. So you’re doing something but then you accuse someone else of doing it, even though they’re not,” she added.

“So this idea of sort of ethnicity is just really again, I think it’s a way of deflecting, let’s focus on what really matters,” she said.

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