The All Progressives Congress Campaign Council has announced
that its standard bearer, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, will not attend the third
edition of the presidential town hall meeting of Arise Television.
This was disclosed in a statement issued by the Director of
Media and Publicity of the APC campaign council, Bayo Onanuga, in Abuja, on
Friday.
The presidential town hall series organised by the
television station in collaboration with the Centre for Democracy and
Development is slated for December 4.
The third edition, which will focus on education,
healthcare, poverty, and human capital, was expected to host Tinubu, standard
bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar; his counterpart in the
Labour Party, Peter Obi and New Nigeria Peoples Party’s presidential hopeful,
Rabiu Kwankwaso.
The development is coming two days after Atiku and his
running mate, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State, pulled out of ‘The
Candidates’, a similar town hall meeting organised by Original Daria Media
concept, MacArthur Foundation, YouTube and Nigerian Television Authority.
Reacting to the Arise News invitation, the camp of the APC
candidate on Friday berated the management of the station for listing him among
candidates coming for the meeting without due consultation.
A livid Onanuga described the act as unprofessional and
reckless.
The statement read, “Our attention has been drawn to an
advertisement by Arise News in connection with a Town Hall meeting scheduled
for 4 December.
“We are surprised that the TV station listed our candidate,
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as a participant, when there was no prior
consultation with him and his aides and no consent of the candidate obtained
for the advertisement.
“We deem this as professionally wrong and reckless. No media
organisation should arrogate to itself the right to railroad any candidate to
fit into its own agenda.
“As we said in an earlier statement, the busy and hectic
campaign schedules of Asiwaju Tinubu will not permit him to honour all
invitations from different radio and TV stations for debate and or Town Hall
meetings hence our decision for him not to start with one media organisation
and later ignore the others.
“In the absence of a unified and mutually acceptable all
parties and all candidates platform, our candidate has been speaking directly
to Nigerians, since President Muhammadu Buhari launched Tinubu’s Action Plan
for a Better Nigeria.
“To date, over seven town hall meetings with strategic
sectors have been held across the geopolitical zones, where the candidate and
his running mate have spoken about their programmes.
“These direct engagements will continue before the election
on 25 February 2023. We, therefore, urge Arise News to stop using our
candidate’s name or portrait in its advertisement, forthwith.”
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