Rethink Nigeria group has today by a press statement questioned the integrity of the forth coming Vice Presidential Debate to hold tomorrow alleging that the organizers have being compromised to the extent of leaking the questions before hand to the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo.
Read full statement below;
We are constrained to use this medium to draw the attention of the General public to the skewed nature of the forthcoming Vice Presidential and Presidential debates scheduled for Friday 14th December 2018 and Saturday 19th January 2019 respectively.
The debate is being organised by The Nigeria Elections Debate Group (NEDG) and the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON).
While we join the rest of the league of democratic Nations to acknowledge the role of debates between candidates for the opportunity it creates for what political scientists call “agenda setting” and robust engagement on issues, it is also important that the debate creates a level playing ground for all parties involved.
Regrettably, the composition and the structure of the debate fundamentally lacks the conditions and characteristics that make for a fair and competitive debate.
Firstly, we have reliably gathered that the questions have been pre-leaked to the Vice-Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo.
In addition to this, the moderators and organisers of the debate are too close to the ruling All Progressives Congress for comfort.
It will be recalled that in recent times, Channels TV (which coincidentally is owned by the Chairman of the Broadcast Organisation of Nigeria (BON), Mr John Momoh) has come under heavy fire for its partisan reportage of political issues in the Country. Of particular importance is the recent op-ed published in the Punch Newspaper of December 2, 2018 titled “TheNTA-nisation of Channels TV” in which the writer, Onoshe Nwabuikwu clearly portrays the bias of the station even to the extent of doctoring videos of the Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina.
Consequently, we want to urge the vice-presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP and other political parties to exempt themselves from the Debate as it is poised to be a charade and a repudiation of everything a debate should be.
We also want to recommend that should the candidates participate regardless that the process has been so blatantly rigged, they must extract a commitment that President Muhammadu Buhari must participate.
We demand that the debate should be postponed in other to give room for the membership of the panel to be recomposed and reconstituted to reflect a panel nominated by a broader section of Nigerians as we are not prepared to accept a choreographed debate.
It is important to make this position public in order to prevent a scenario where Nigerians are deceived by pre-determined answers given by Vice President Osinbajo at the debate which have no reflection on the reality of the governance of the country over the last 3 years or will not be a reflection of the reality of governance going into the future.
Sunny Okoro
Publicity Secretary
Rethink Nigeria
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