Presidential Candidates of four political parties will interface with Nigerians on their plans if elected in 2023.
The candidates are Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC); former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); former Governor Peter Obi of Labour Party and Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso of New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP).
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According to Idayat Hassan, Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), her organisation is collaborating with ARISE Television to host series of Presidential Town hall meetings.
She said the town hall discussions are imperative because the groups have identified the need to ensure citizens hear from the presidential candidates.
The CDD director said this followed the centre’s constant campaign to ensure that the parties and candidates conducted issues-based campaigns.
She said Nigerians needed to hear how their future leaders planned to address the rising level of insecurity, considerable economic challenges, and the impact of foreign affairs on domestic considerations.
“This has informed our engagements around the elections, from providing fact-checking support and working with partners, to providing analyses on the election security terrain.”
“We are aware that there are questions surrounding the shortlisted candidates we invited to the first Town hall.
“However, this decision was not without reasoning or a set methodology.
“To ensure ample time was devoted to hearing each of the candidates, we ran a survey on Twitter from Oct. 4th to the 10th, 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 (AAC) – 20.7%, All Progressives Congress (APC) – 86.2%, All Progressives Grand
Alliance (APGA) – 6.9%, Labour Party (LP) – 96.6%, New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) – 51.7%, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – 82.8%, Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) – 6.9%, Social Democratic Party (SDP) – 6.9% and Young Progressive Party (YPP) – 13.8%,” she said in a statement.
She said results of the survey informed the group’s decision to invite the highest four scoring parties LP, APC, PDP and NNPP to the town hall.
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