Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: My Country Is in a Fragile Place

NYT OPINION: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: My Country Is in a Fragile Place
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: February 28, 2023 at 02:00AM

The Biden administration needs to stand behind the Nigerian people now and make a firm commitment to support election transparency.

Imagine standing patiently in line, waiting to vote, and suddenly men with guns arrive on motorcycles and start shooting. Imagine men dashing into your polling unit, violently seizing ballot boxes and taking them away. Imagine other ballot boxes being destroyed. Imagine being beaten to keep you from voting for a particular candidate. Imagine a crowd of people chanting “We must vote! We must vote!” when polling workers failed to arrive as expected. Imagine the police doing very little. All these things happened during the Nigerian presidential elections on Saturday. Through it all, there was a chilling lack of transparency from the Independent National Electoral Commission, or I.N.E.C., which oversees elections.
Nigerian elections have a history of being rigged, of cooked-up numbers and stolen ballot boxes. This time, though, Nigerians were asked to place their faith in a new electronic voting system that would make tampering more difficult. Technology would be the savior: In each polling unit, votes would be counted in the presence of voters and then immediately uploaded to a secure central portal. Failing to upload the results in real time was the most egregious of the many irregularities of this election because it has destroyed the cautious trust with which many approached the process.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/opinion/nigerian-elections-obi.html