Ahead of the February 25 election, irrelevant issues outside the key governance policies have dominated the presidential campaigns in the last two months, pro-democracy groups said Sunday.
According to the groups, irrelevant issues outside of the key policy and campaign issues dominated the campaign sphere representing 60.22% of the entire campaign messages in the last two months, while issues relating to the economy, education and security were represented in the campaign discourse at 10.44%, 8.01%, and 7.51% respectively.
The Centre for Research on Development of African Media and Society (CEREDEMS-Africa) and Positive Agenda Nigeria (PAN) said this in a report of its two months of monitoring the presidential election campaign ahead of the elections.
The Director of the project’s Communication and Public Engagement, Jamiu Folarin made this known in a statement made available to Daily Trust correspondent in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
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Our correspondent reports that Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) are leading in the presidential race.
The groups said the report indicated that the election campaign atmosphere within the last eight weeks have “a mix of both positive and negative outcomes” as the campaign landscape is dominated by issues that do not focus on issues of national importance.
They expressed worry that “Conversations on the campaign terrain largely focused on candidates’ personality and competence disparagement at the expense of major socio-economic issues ravaging the country.
