Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, Kwankwaso finally meet to debate today

Leading presidential contenders for the 2023 elections have received invitations to speak about their visions for the nation from the Centre for Democracy and Development, a pro-democracy research group. The invitation would also provide them a chance to persuade Nigerians that their political parties had the most innovative ideas for addressing the problems facing the nation.

Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, Peter Obi of the Labor Party, and Rabi'u Musa Kwankwaso were the candidates invited to the town hall organized by the CDD in partnership with Arise Television (New Nigeria Peoples Party). The CDD's director, Idayat Hassan, announced on Sunday that the first of these sessions will take place today, November 6, and would be broadcast on Arise TV as well as on its YouTube and other media outlets.

She claims that the CDD recognized the need to make sure voters heard from the presidential contenders before the 2023 elections. “This follows CDD’s constant campaign to ensure that the parties and candidates conduct issue-based campaigns. Nigerians need to hear how their future leaders plan to address the rising level of insecurity, considerable economic challenges and the impact of foreign affairs in domestic considerations. This has informed our engagements around the elections, from providing fact-checking support and working with partners to provide analyses on the election security terrain,” Hassan stated.

She claimed that the procedure for choosing the applicants was not devoid of logic or a predetermined technique, which helped to explain why the CDD only invited the four candidates.
Hassan said, “To ensure ample time devoted to hearing each of the candidates, we ran a survey on Twitter from October 4 to 10, asking citizens to vote on which four parties they wanted to hear from. All 18 political parties were listed in alphabetical order. After the survey was closed, nine parties did not receive a vote. The remaining nine received the following percentage of votes- African Action Congress – 20.7 per cent, APC – 86.2 per cent, All Progressives Grand Alliance – 6.9 per cent, LP – 96.6 per cent, NNPP – 51.7 per cent, PDP– 82.8 per cent, Peoples Redemption Party – 6.9 per cent, Social Democratic Party – 6.9 per cent and Young Progressive Party – 13.8 per cent. The result of this survey informed our decision to invite the highest four scoring parties – LP, APC, PDP and NNPP to the town hall. The CDD is an independent and neutral institution and is non-partisan or linked to any political party or candidate. The methodology stated above was set before the survey was sent out to avoid any insinuation or claims of bias. We do not expect this to be the sole platform for candidates to engage with the electorate.”


References
Punchng, 'Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, Kwankwaso face Nigerians in debate today' (online, 2022) <https://punchng.com/tinubu-atiku-obi-kwankwaso-face-nigerians-in-debate-today/>.