More presidential candidates in
the 2019 election have claimed they were not invited to the national peace
accord meeting on Tuesday.
Donald Duke of Social Democratic
Party (SDP) and Omoyele Sowore of Action Alliance said that they
received no invitation regarding the programme which held in Abuja.
Responding to enquiries on the
matter, Duke said “we did not get any invitation” while Sowore also noted that
he was “not invited”.
Apart from the duo, Atiku
Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Kingsley Moghalu of the Young
Progressives Party (YPP) and Oby Ezekwesili of the Allied Congress Party of
Nigeria (ACPN) were also absent.
Ezekwesili and Moghalu did not
pick calls and are yet to respond to text messages to
determine why they were absent.
Just like Duke and Sowore, Atiku
had also said he was not invited to the programme which had President Muhammadu
Buhari in attendance.
However, the National Peace
Committee, which organised the event, had said invitations were sent to all 73
presidential candidates contesting the 2019 elections.
Abdulsalami Abubakar, chairman of
the committee, had said there was no reason to exempt any of the candidates and
that “if there is a break down of communications somewhere, I don’t know”.
WHY IS THE PEACE DEAL IMPORTANT?
Abubakar said the objective of
the peace deal was for all political parties to “sign to be of goodwill and
good behaviour during elections”.
A similar accord was signed in
the build-up of the 2015 elections, with the major presidential candidates
committing to a peaceful poll and to also accept defeat.
The accord is believed to be a
major contributor to the relatively peaceful conduct of the election that year.
Among the commitments at the
meeting was: “To forcefully and publicly speak out against provocative
utterances a d oppose all acts of electoral violence whether perpetrated by our
supporters and/or opponents.”
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This means Atiku is actually right.
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