el-Rufai Backs Boycott Of Presidential Debate By ACN, ANPP, CPC

Posted by admin Action Congress of Nigeria, All Nigerian Peoples' Party (ANPP), CPC (Congress 4 Progressive Change), Elections 2011, National Politics, Party Politics Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

The former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, has thrown his weight behind the decision of candidates of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) to shun the presidential debate held on Monday.

The former FCT minister told LEADERSHIP in Abuja yesterday that there were suspicions of unfairness surrounding the decision by President Goodluck Jonathan to attend the Nigeria Election Debate Group (NEDG) presidential debate and not the presidential debate organised by the NN24 in which only the presidential candidates of the ACN, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, CPC, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and the ANPP, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau participated.

He said that there were reasons to justify the suspicions because it had become obvious that the organisers of the debate had a relationship with the president that would have favoured him by making him to prepare himself before the debate.

el-rufai said, “It was a good decision that they decided not to attend the debate. Why should they have attended? If President Jonathan decided not to attend a debate organised by an independent, non-governmental organization and was only willing to attend a debate organised by largely government-owned organizations, why should the other candidates attend?

“In that kind of debate, they should not expect fairness, because it was only to favour President Goodluck Jonathan. We got SMS of the questions sent to Goodluck Jonathan to prepare for the debate; that is what you have when independent organisations are not allowed to operate.

“I think the suspicion that other presidential candidates had was that the debate which was organized by the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON), which is largely dominated by government-owned Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) and Africa Independent Television (AIT), whose boss is in the presidential campaign council, just cannot be fair to other candidates,” he said.

-Leadership