Ojimaojo Yunus, Abuja
The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) in collaboration with Arise Television is to host series of it maiden presidential town halls ahead of the 2023 general elections.
According to a statement signed and made available to journalists on Sunday by its Director, Idayat Hassan, the first of these sessions takes place Sunday and will be aired on Arise Television and on its YouTube and social media platforms.
She said , CDD and Arise identified the need to ensure citizens hear from the presidential candidates. This follows CDD’s constant campaign to ensure that the parties and candidates conduct issues-based campaigns.
She said ,”Nigerians need to hear how their future leaders plan to address the rising level of insecurity, economic challenges and the impact of foreign affairs in domestic considerations.
“This has informed our engagements around the elections, from providing fact-checking support and working with partners to provide 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 devoted to hearing each of the candidates, we ran a survey on Twitter from the 4th to the 10th of October, asking citizens to vote on which four parties they wanted to hear from”, Idayat said.
Speaking further, she noted that All 18 political parties were listed in alphabetical order. After the survey was closed, nine parties did not receive a vote.
She explained that 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%.
Idayat said the result of this survey informed our decision to invite the highest four scoring parties – LP, APC, PDP and NNPP to the town hall. CDD is an independent and neutral institution and is non-partisan or linked to any political party or candidate.
“The methodology stated above was set before the survey was sent out to avoid any insinuation or claims of bias. We do not expect this to be the sole platform for candidates to engage with the electorate.
While speaking on fake news, Idayat explained thus: “Through our ongoing work – a weekly newsletter focusing on issues for candidates, an election security tracker in partnership with the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project (ACLED), a fake news observatory to monitor misinformation spread during the campaign and our periodic reports and outreach programmes ahead of the election – we expect to support and amplify voices and platforms so Nigerians can make an informed decision.
“We hope that this town hall is not the only avenue for Nigerians to listen to their presidential candidates. We welcome other platforms and opportunities to support an issues-based campaign in the run-up to the 2023 elections.
“We are optimistic that such dialogue and engagement can only engender better civic engagement and lead to a peaceful and reflective election outcome,” she said .
