On Saturday, The Guardian published a touching and deeply personal piece by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about her battle with depression, but pulled the article on Sunday, saying it had been published in error.
After the article’s removal, the link originally redirected to a page with the following message:
This article was deleted on 1 February 2015 because it was launched in error, without the permission of the author following a technical error. The Guardian apologises unreservedly to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
But now contains a more generic message:
Sorry – the page you are looking for has been removed
This may be because of a legal objection, a rights consideration or for another reason.
If you want to contact someone about the page, you can email the readers’ editor on:
• reader@theguardian.com
For more on our editorial code and links to our latest corrections and clarifications column, visit the accuracy and standards pages.
To continue reading, please visit The Guardian’s home page.
Unfortunately, the piece is still available on some sites – where it has been copied word for word, presumably without permission – and in Google’s cache, illustrating that it’s virtually impossible to remove information from the internet.
TO Molefe says the incident “feels like some kind of violation”:
I've no idea how @guardian published this piece without permission. It now feels like some kind of violation to have read it on good faith.
— T. O. (@TOMolefe) February 1, 2015
Adichie’s eloquent piece on the quality of electricity in Nigeria, published by The New York Times on Saturday, is however still available. In it, Adichie makes South Africa’s woes with Eskom seem almost insignificant, saying “I spend more on diesel than on food”.
Read the piece:
LAGOS, Nigeria — WE call it light; “electricity” is too sterile a word, and “power” too stiff, for this Nigerian phenomenon that can buoy spirits and smother dreams. Whenever I have been away from home for a while, my first question upon returning is always: “How has light been?” The response, from my gateman, comes in mournful degrees of a head shake.
Bad. Very bad.
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