International human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe has written to US President in a last-death effort to stop the US Government Delegation from attending the Monday, May 29 inauguration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Nigeria’s new President.
In the letter dated 26th May, 2023, Ogebe, of the Washington-based US Nigeria Law Group, highlighted “US Nigeria policy contradictions in light of the misguided White House inauguration delegation” and gave eight reasons why the nine-member delegation led by US Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge should not proceed to Nigeria for Tinubu’s inauguration. The letter reads unedited:
Dear President Joe Biden,
As a top US – Nigeria affairs expert, I write to express grave concern and great displeasure at your planned delegation to the inauguration of a fraudulent-elect in Nigeria.
To say that your action is hypocritical and antithetical to America’s democratic ideals is an understatement.
Firstly, as your administration is prosecuting hundreds of insurrectionists who tried to overturn your election win, Nigeria also reports arresting over 700 individuals for election offenses. How then can you accord legitimacy to multi-state election criminality in Nigeria that exceeded even the January 6th levels?
Secondly, the BBC has exposed a fake election collator, who announced fake election results in Rivers state, falsely granting the ruling party victory over the Labor Party (A “Collator” in Nigeria is similar to an “Elector” in America).
Yet, while your administration is investigating for prosecution fake electors who attempted to subvert your election, you’re celebrating the candidate rigged-in by the fake collator.
According to CNN, “The New York Times said some potential crimes could include falsifying voting documents, mail fraud or potentially a conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Attorneys general from the seven states with fake electors have said that they’re aware of the reports and reviewing the matter under state law. Some referred the matter to the Justice Department, because it relates to a federal election, and it happened across several states.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told CNN in an exclusive interview that the Justice Department received the referrals and that “our prosecutors are looking at those and I can’t say anything more on ongoing investigations.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, has publicly said she is “confident we have enough evidence to charge” people under state law for “forgery of a public record,” and other crimes.” “
Thirdly, Nigeria’s 2023 election violence was deadlier than Gen. Buhari’s military coup 40 years ago; than the 2019 elections and even than the Jan 6 insurrection – making a mockery of your descriptor of him as a “champion of democracy.”
Fourthly, your government announced sanctions on unnamed officials for “undermining democracy” in Nigeria’s elections then immediately announced a high level delegation to the inauguration of the vote-rigger!
This classic one-step forward, two steps backward fauxtrot is just the latest iteration of America’s schizophrenic Nigeria policy.
It is tantamount to condemning a rapist then going to attend the premier of the rape video he shot.
Sadly, this is not just about America’s obsequious Chinese Africa checkers posturing. This has been the bipolar policying since the Clinton administration to the present.
During your prior Obama/Biden administration, you designated the leaders of terror group Boko Haram as terrorists but refused to designate the group itself as a Foreign Terrorist Organization despite the fact that it attacked American diplomat and FBI Legal Attaché Vernice Guthrie and Jennifer Dent in deadly suicide bombings.
Your administration covered up the attacks on these American women in Nigeria which happened during your first term till this day and only designated Boko Haram in the second term when your current Deputy Attorney General Monaco (who was pro-FTO designation) moved from DOJ to the White House and I led a human rights campaign to designate it via US congressional action.
Why is your administration again engaging in cognitive dissonance by denouncing the rigging and embracing the rigger?
Fifthly, the Nigerian presidential election not only did not meet global or local standards, it palpably did not meet constitutional thresholds. Like the US constitution on which it was modeled, the Nigerian elections have mandatory thresholds similar to the popular and electoral college requirements. In this case, candidates must have 25% of votes in 24 states and the Capital. Nigeria’s ruling party did not obtain 25% in the Capital as required by the constitution.
In the same way that you could not lawfully have been declared president in 2020, without securing 270 electoral votes, no one could be lawfully declared president in Nigeria’s February elections without winning 25% in the capital Abuja.
Why is the US legitimizing unconscionable unconstitutionality that wouldn’t stand in the US more so when a lot of taxpayer funds were invested in Nigeria’s election systems?
Sixthly, the US more than any other country knows that there is not just a problem with the Process but a problem with the Person thrown up by the fraudulent elections.
The US has the receipts of Senator Bola Tinubu’s reported narcotics involvement, suspected ID theft, multimillion dollar money laundering New York property acquisitions, alleged forgery etc in over a quarter century serial crime spree in the US.
A former US drug mafia accountant and an alleged complicit former islamo-terror state governor are set to take over America’s top trade partner in Africa, even though FBI Legal Attaché Jennifer Dent reported to the Nigerian government’s anti-corruption agency that Chicago State University had no record of Bola Tinubu’s attendance and survived an attack by Boko Haram (emanating from his running mate’s domain.)
Seventhly, your delegation is to go into Nigeria days after the first known deadly US embassy convoy ambush following years of US cover up of attacks on American diplomats and citizens like Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Dent amongst others.
While mass killings continue in intensity with triple digit fatalities in Benue, Plateau, Niger and Kaduna states in a couple of months since the elections, your administration has continued to paper over Islamist genocide by unlawfully delisting Nigeria from review and citation for egregious religious persecution since you assumed the presidency.
Nigeria had been subject to derogatory designation since the inception of the International Religious Freedom Act over two decades ago, including ironically under your Obama/Biden administration, until you came and illegally and surreptitiously dropped Nigeria’s designation as a Country of Particular Concern – even as a Christian schoolgirl was burnt alive on video in a government school by Muslims and no one convicted since last year.
The US is not just cuddling transnational terrorism by both the Fulani militia and ISIS West Africa but glossing over a religious apartheid and genocide in Nigeria, both politically and terroristically, while continuing to endanger American lives.
Ironically, Secretary of State Blinken’s latest blackout of Nigeria’s religious freedom crises came weeks after ordering the unprecedented evacuation of most American diplomats and their families out of Abuja due to islamists‘ bombing attempt on American diplomats’ homes in Nigeria in October – and Gen. Buhari’s inability to secure them!
Buhari’s delegation to your US Africa Presidential Summit last December stayed in DC hotels alongside hundreds of US diplomats displaced from Abuja for weeks. The US denial of the ongoing religious genocide at the expense of refugee American diplomatic families was an unspeakable travesty and slight of their service.
As such the State Department’s State of Denial continues to claim the lives of Nigerians needlessly and threaten the lives of Americans as well. As Dr King said, “injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere!”
In a perfect epitaph to your administration’s burial of religious freedom in Nigeria, during your summit, Kano state sentenced to death by hanging an Islamic cleric, Abduljabbar Nasiru Kabara, for blasphemy.
Yet you pronounced Gen. Buhari a “Champion of democracy!”
Eighthly, is your administration’s plan to return tens of millions of dollars looted by the Nigerian dictator Gen. Abacha, who abducted, tortured, imprisoned and ultimately exiled me to America as a young lawyer 25 years ago, back to his bagman and use over $150 million leftover to fight climate change in Nigeria. This notwithstanding that Nigeria has more pressing priorities and this is a wrong message to send to lootocrats.
In conclusion, the foregoing are just a few examples of the yawning chasm between American ideals and Nigeria’s aspirations in your policy orientation or lack thereof. It is reflective of a disturbing disconnect between your administration, which has a number of high placed Nigerian American officials (which is commendable) and their desire to see Nigeria do well too.
Mr. President, you have a chance not to be on the wrong side of history; not to vote against the hopes of the Nigerian American community who are a key component of America’s black demography or millions of Nigeria’s youth whose necks are under the asphyxiating knees of Nigeria’s kleptomaniacal gerontocrats.
You have a choice not to repeat the mistakes of the Obama/Biden era which, thankfully, course-corrected in the second term but you have now effectively reversed.
Don’t let America irretrievably lose its moral compass on relations with Nigeria yet again.
On this anniversary of George Floyd’s state murder and the approaching Memorial Day, do not dance on the graves of Nigerians murdered in fraudulent elections to foist a money launderer for drug cartels that destroyed American lives. Cancel the ignoble inauguration delegation now!
