The Nigerian Election Debates Group (NEDG) has decided to shift the dates of the debates scheduled to begin on Tuesday, November 15, 2022, to December 2023.
This development resulted from the recent Town hall event hosted by Arise Television on Sunday, November 6, 2022, at the Transcorp Hilton Hotels, Abuja and its immediate impact on candidates and political associates making statements considered damaging to the entrenchment of democratic culture in our nation.
The group stated, “this event calls for our concern. As a body, we are not judges or prosecutors of any person, group, or organisation involved in hosting debates. We make these statements because the matters arising from that Arise Group debate have general and wide-ranging ramifications resulting in nerves being frayed and high tension among the Presidential candidates, so the reason must prevail.”
In line with the NEDG’s SELECT Logistics, Content, Research, and Implementation Committee, comprising Executive Directors/General Managers of News, Engineering, and Production of member stations of the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON) who met at an extraordinary meeting, the group concluded its ongoing dialogue with The Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC) on including all Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates in all debates scheduled for the 2023 General Elections.
“This postponement brings the debates close to a period when political parties are neck-deep in their rallies and may find it difficult to be drawn away from their political schedules. We prevailed on all political parties to endeavor to make time to present their candidates for the debates, as any act of evasion reveals the inherent characteristics of dictatorship in a democratic dispensation,” they reaffirmed.
On behalf of The Chairman, Board of Trustees of the NEDG, The Chairman and Central Working Committee of BON, and the Executive Secretaries of BON and NEDG, apologies were rendered to all political candidates who may have changed their schedules to suit the dates given previously.
Note that the NEDG is an organisation duly set up by the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON) in coalition with some Civil society and professional media groups to deepen democracy and entrench an enduring democratic culture through organised radio and television live debates.
It is also worthy of note that the NEDG organised Governorship debates in the staggered elections in Edo state, Ondo state in 2012, and Anambra state in 2013. Under the leadership of Aremo Taiwo Allimi, then Director General of the Voice of Nigeria, a team from NEDG was invited to the United States of America to be trained for debates management and organisation by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) in 2011 facilitated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) based here in Abuja. Since then, the CPD has also collaborated with the NEDG to host and train Election Debates Organisations in Fifteen African countries, not to mention the facilitation and the setting up of the Sierra Leone Elections Debates Group, which superintended the Presidential Debates that brought President Bai Koroma to power in his first term in office in 2014.
Their main objectives are;
- To assist Presidential Candidates in effectively communicating their platforms and agenda to the electorate.
- To assist voters to make informed choices during the 2023 General Elections in our country.
- To put on record promises made by Presidential candidates to which they will be held accountable if elected.
- Debates provide a platform to assess the candidates’ understanding of the socio-economic issues, the inter-relatedness, and their justifications for the solutions their policies, programmes, and agendas offer.
- Debates are used to extracting implementation plans from candidates segregated into short-term and medium-term.
- From our experience, debates are meticulously planned events based on specific internationally accepted rules and best practice guidelines. We believe that Debates, therefore, do not have segments of home-grown nuances and must be based on accepted international standards.
S.O
