The Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo SAN has reacted to the Nigerian literary icon, Chimamanda Adichie’s open letter to US President Joe Biden, describing it as epistolary , “flowery” a mere pastime and of no consequence.
Keyamo who was the Spokesperson of the ruling APC Presidential Campaign Council PCC made his reaction in a tweet from his verified Twitter handle Friday.
The Minister carpeted the letter, berated its author and blamed the act on the opposition, who he described as petty and bad losers, who are yet to survive from the shock of defeat of the last Presidential election.
The tweet which was titled: “NIGERIA’S BURGEONING (NOT HOLLOW) DEMOCRACY” reads: “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. 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.
“More tragic is that some rabid supporters here are falling over themselves in deluded ecstasy for such a worthless letter that may not even be considered worthy enough, in a diplomatic sense, for the attention of even a stenographer to an Under Secretary in the US. Such only paints the picture of a band of drowning supporters clutching at any straw to stay afloat.
“As for the empirical fallacies contained in the letter, I will not bother myself here with a lengthy response as enough have been said in the last few weeks in respect of those specific issues and all the issues are before our Justices awaiting adjudication. But I have bad news for them: the stenographer will probably toss the letter into a trash bin with the conclusion that it is no more than the tantrums of a Trump reincarnate in Nigeria – those who refuse to accept obvious defeat! Yes, the US has the likes of that writer in their midst too!
Recall that in the letter titled: “Nigeria’s Hollow Democracy,” Adichie posed the question on why Americans keep congratulating the winner of Nigeria’s election in February.
” Adichie writes. “Many Nigerians went out to vote holding in their hearts a new sense of trust. Cautious trust, but still trust.”
What followed was a breach of that trust, when on February 26 social media became flooded with evidence of voting irregularities: “numbers crossed out and rewritten; some originally written in black ink had been rewritten in blue, some blunderingly whited-out with Tipp-Ex. The election had been not only rigged, but done in such a shoddy, shabby manner that it insulted the intelligence of Nigerians.”
“Rage is brewing,” Adichie writes, “especially among young people. The discontent, the despair, the tension in the air have not been this palpable in years.”