Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, yesterday ramped up her criticism of the conduct of the 2023 presidential election, maintaining that President Muhammadu Buhari and the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu, blew the chance to emerge as the new heroes of Nigeria’s fledgling democracy. During her on Arise Television.
Here are 10 things she talked about the 2023 Nigeria Elections.
1. About her support for Peter Obi.
“I did not support Peter Obi because he’s Igbo as I am. My support for Peter Obi is rooted in his antecedents and my faith in his ability. The idea of ethnicity politicized by a political party is a way of deflecting, and quite unfortunate”
I did not support Peter Obi because he’s Igbo as I am. My support for Peter Obi is rooted in his antecedents and my faith in his ability. The idea of ethnicity politicized by a political party is a way of deflecting, and quite unfortunate – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pic.twitter.com/eICZs9pJme
— ARISE NEWS (@ARISEtv) April 12, 2023
2. Lawsuit.
“I am not worried about a lawsuit”
3. Election Technology.
“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,”
4. On PVCs
“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”
5. Doubling down on her criticism of the INEC chairman
“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 the 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,”
6. About Prof. Wole Soyinka describing Labour Party’s vice-presidential candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmed’s comment on the general elections as fascist.
“I have a lot of respect for Prof. Soyinka, I admire him, I respect him as a thinker, as a writer, I think every one should read the The Man Died, Ake: The Memoir is beautiful, but at the same time, I disagree with him very strongly on this particular issue, and actually because I respect Prof. Soyinka so much, I went back and watch the interview, and I think fascist is a really strong word.
“We use it now to address this sort of authoritarianism that is often populist, and right-wing like Hungary, and even the former American president, and if you look at those situations, you can see why they have been termed fascist, and I didn’t see any reason Mr. Datti Baba-Ahmed’s interview would have been termed fascist.
“I think he was making a very strongly felt point about the election. I think a charitable way of reading Prof. Soyinka’s comments is that Professor Soyinka himself, I think it’s fair to say he is not given to restraint in language, in general, so maybe that’s where that word fascist came from.”
7. On the allegation that she was supporting Peter Obi because of his Igbo origin.
“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.
8. Suggestions for the use of the word Fascist.
“However, I have suggestions for what we could use fascist for, we could use fascist for INEC, because as it is right now, many Nigerians feel deeply cheated by INEC, deeply disenfranchised by INEC, and that is authoritarianism which obviously is the basis of fascism at the centre of manipulating an election because what you’re doing is that you’re gagging people, you’re forcibly taking away their voice, that is fascist,” she posited.
9. On Prof Yakubu.
“I think that Prof Yakubu had an opportunity for heroism. I think he wasted it spectacularly. Because he could very easily have become the hero of not just Nigerians but Africa because so many Africans were watching and they were so inspired by what happened before this election and by the ‘obidient’ movement.”
10. On President Buhari.
“I also think that the President Buhari missed an opportunity for heroism, maybe his last chance at heroism, because Nigerians felt before the elections that he meant well and meant to support credible elections. I don’t think many Nigerians think that now,” she noted.
11. Bonus – About the Supreme Court.
“ I hope they will. I think there’s reason to doubt that because the Supreme Court has had rulings that just did not make a lot of sense to most people. And so there’s reason to worry, but I’m hopeful. I’m generally hopeful. I’m optimistic that they will do the right thing and that people will get justice,” she said.