The first part of the debate was held on Sunday, November 6, 2022, in Abuja.
Omoyele Sowore, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) for the 2023 general elections, has asked Arise TV and the Centre for Democracy and Development to apologise for excluding him from ‘Series one’ of its presidential debate.
The first part of the debate was held on Sunday, November 6, 2022, in Abuja.
CDD and Arise TV only invited Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party for the debate held last Sunday.
But Tinubu and Atiku failed to show up at the event.
The vice-presidential candidate of the PDP, Ifeanyi Okowa represented Atiku, while Tinubu had no representative.
The organisers claimed the four candidates were selected based on the performance of their parties in an online survey by the organisers during which all the 18 political parties were listed in alphabetical order.
“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 Director of the CDD, Idayat Hassan had earlier said in a statement.
“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.”
However, the organisers failed to invite Sowore who they claimed scored 20.7 percent after Tinubu backed out of the debate. Instead, they went for Kola Abiola of the Peoples Redemption Party who had 6.9 percent.
The organisers also shunned the candidates of the YPP, SDP and APGA who had 13.8 percent, 6.9 percent and 6.9 percent respectively.
Many Nigerians including an activist, Baba Aye also condemned the action of Arise TV and CDD.
Following the backlash, the organisers invited Sowore of the AAC, Adebayo Adewole of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Sani Yabagi Yusuf of the Action Democratic Party (ADP) and Umeadi Peter Nnanna of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) for Series two of the debate.
At the Series two of the presidential debate on Sunday, Sowore asked the organisers to apologise to him and other presidential candidates initially excluded from the debate.
He said, “I must state that last week should have been the day we should all be here but for some reason, you decided to invite the leads within the presidential race and we think you owe us an apology for that because Nigeria should stop bringing people who have no ideas to talk to Nigerians when those who have ideas are relegated to the background.
“That is where we have gotten it wrong all these years.”