APC PRESIDENTIAL FLAGBEARER, ASIWAJU TINUBU DECLINES ARISE TV TOWN HALL MEETING INVITE

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By Aishat Momoh. O.

Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the party’s standard bearer, has informed the All Progressives Congress Campaign Council that he will not be present for the third Arise Television presidential town hall meeting.

This was mentioned in a statement signed by Bayo Onanuga, the Director, Media & Publicity of APC campaign council and obtained by Hotjist on Friday.

December 4 is the date for the presidential town hall series that the television station and the Center for Democracy and Development are organizing.

Atiku Abubakar, the candidate for the Peoples Democratic Party, Tinubu, Peter Obi, and Rabiu Kwankwaso, the presidential candidate for the New Nigeria Peoples Party, were all anticipated to attend the third edition, which will focus on education, healthcare, poverty, and human capital.

Two days prior, Atiku and his running mate, Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, withdrew from “The Candidates,” a similar town hall event hosted by Original Daria Media, the MacArthur Foundation, YouTube, and the Nigerian Television Authority.

In response to the invitation from Arise News, the APC candidate’s team chastised the station’s management on Friday for including him on the list of attendees without first consulting him.

Onanuga, furious, called the action careless and unprofessional.

Thee statement reads, “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 platform for all parties and all candidates, our candidate has been speaking directly to Nigerians, since President Muhammadu Buhari launched Tinubu’s Action Plan for a Better Nigeria.

Till 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.