Chimamanda Adichie, a celebrated Nigerian author, has advised U.S. President Joe Biden to hold off on congratulating Bola Tinubu as Nigeria’s next president, as doing so could legitimise what she described as an “illegitimate process” that led to his victory.


“Congratulating its (election) outcome, President Biden tarnishes America’s self-proclaimed commitment to democracy,” the writer said in a letter titled “Nigeria’s Hollow Democracy” published in The Atlantic on Thursday. 

“Please do not give the sheen of legitimacy to an illegitimate process. The United States should be what it says it is,” Ms Adichie enjoined the American leader.

Ms Adichie, in the open letter, said the election that produced Mr Tinubu was tainted with irregularities as pictures of result sheets taken by voters from various polling units did not match the sheets belatedly uploaded on the commission’s server.

“Voters compared their cellphone photos with the uploaded photos and saw alterations: numbers crossed out and rewritten; some originally written in black ink had been rewritten in blue, some blunderingly whited-out with Tipp-Ex,” the writer pointed out. “The election had been not only rigged, but done in such a shoddy, shabby manner that it insulted the intelligence of Nigerians.”

“It is ironic that many images of altered result sheets showed votes overwhelmingly being transferred from the Labour Party to the APC,” Ms Adichie wrote in the letter.

She also said that the nation’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) under Chairman Mahmood Yakubu, may have been compromised based on its conduct, particularly its eagerness to declare a winner despite objections from worried citizens.

“Some electoral workers in polling units claimed that they could not upload results because they didn’t have a password, an excuse that voters understood to be subterfuge. By the end of the day, it had become obvious that something was terribly amiss,” the writer said, recounting the unfortunate experience of the majority of Nigerian voters.

She said it “seemed truly perplexing” that INEC “would ignore so many glaring red flags in its rush to announce a winner. (It had the power to pause vote counting, to investigate irregularities—as it would do in the governorship elections two weeks later.”

Ms Adichie cautioned the U.S. leader against toeing the path of his UK counterpart, Rishi Sunak, who had rushed to congratulate Mr Tinubu.

According to her, “the battle for influence in Africa will not be won by supporting the same undemocratic processes for which China is criticized.”

Ms Adichie’s claim was rejected previously by members of Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress, who commended the electoral office for improving Nigeria’s election this year.

Foreign experts, including retired American diplomat Johnnie Carson, also welcomed Mr Tinubu’s victory, saying he put in the resources and groundwork to attain history.

Still, Mr Carson said the election that produced Mr Tinubu could have been better conducted.

“To me, the problem is not with Tinubu and the other candidates,” he said. “Nigeria deserves the very best electoral process.”

Main opposition parties, Labour and PDP, have filed petitions against Mr Tinubu’s election in court in a tedious proceeding that should get to the Supreme Court in eight months.