US Senator, Ted Cruz, is asking for a peace meeting with Nigerian-Americans who have demanded that he retracts his controversial joke last week which many of them considered insulting, Empowered Newswire reports.
According to a letter from the senator released over the weekend to leaders of the Nigerian community in Houston, Texas, where the controversial comments were made, the senator “regrets any misunderstanding.”
The letter was signed by one of the aides of the senator, Mr David Sawyer, the South-East Texas Regional Director in his office. Sawyer, in another correspondence, is also asking for a peace meeting today between Senator Cruz and representatives of the Nigerian community in Houston.
Senator Cruz has been bombarded with several phone calls from Nigerians in Houston and all across the US since last Monday October 21 comments.
Besides, there has been a big splash of negative media focus on the American Senator here in the US, which peaked on Friday with the widely reported response of the Nigerian Ambassador to the US, Professor Ade
Adefuye, who in a firm manner asked the US Senator to apologize.
The letter of apology, a copy of which was made available to Empowered Newswire yesterday, quoted the senator directly in part. It read thus. Earlier this week, Senator Ted Cruz made a joke in which he used the term “Nigerian email scam.”
Senator Cruz regrets that “it is unfortunate that we’re living in a time where just about every joke can be misconstrued to cause offence to someone.”
Senator Cruz has never, nor would ever use a blanket term in a derogatory fashion against such a vibrant and integral part of our community. This usage was never directed to the Nigerian community as a whole.
“To the good people of Nigeria — a beautiful nation where my wife lived briefly as the child of missionaries — no offence was intended.
“I am fully appreciative of the range of mutual economic and security interests that make Nigeria an important friend to the United States,” Senator Cruz said in a statement released yesterday.
Senator Cruz regrets any misunderstanding.
The letter was printed on Ted Cruz official US Congress paper and was dated Friday, October 25.
Adefuye’s interview with a number of leading US media has been making the waves here in the last few days, following after several other calls from Nigerian groups and individuals condemning the controversial US Senator.
According to the Houston Chronicle , Senator Cruz while taking a political swipe at the computer problems of the Affordable Care Act rollout, was reported as saying “You may have noticed that all the Nigerian email scammers have become a lot less active lately… They all have been hired to run the Obamacare website.”
Right after that statement, the Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans (CANAN) issued a statement widely circulated here in the US describing the comments as “distasteful, and disparaging.”
According to CANAN, in a statement by its Executive Director, Laolu Akande, “Cruz has maligned all hardworking, decent and outstanding Nigerian-Americans who add value and bring goodwill to their different communities, especially in Texas, with the largest concentration of Nigerian-Americans in this country.”
Demanding for an apology, CANAN rejected the senator’s explanation that it was just a joke, saying the association “finds it appalling and reprehensible that the good name and reputation of Nigerian-Americans is what the senator can joke with whimsically. This is completely unacceptable.”
Adefuye also confirmed yesterday that the embattled US Senator “has called on the phone for a meeting at the highest possible level to end this matter once and for all.”
He assured that the Federal Government is “determined to make this case an example that Nigeria and Nigerians cannot be kicked around.”
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