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WATCH Arise TV Presidential Town Hall Meeting Live Stream Here
Arise TV Presidential Town Hall Meeting is currently ongoing.
Newsone reports that a town hall meeting for presidential candidates for the 2023 election organised by Arise Television and a group, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), has kicked off with the candidates debating on the security situation of the country and other issues.
This online news platform understands that the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi and his New Nigeria Peoples Party counterpart, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, are currently participating in the debate while Bola Tinubu, the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are absent.
Newsone Nigeria gathered that Arise TV and the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) had invited Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, Obi and Kwankwaso for the debate.
According to the organisers, the four candidates were selected based on the performance of their parties in an online survey by the organisers during which all the 18 political parties were listed in alphabetical order.
“The result of this survey informed our decision to invite the highest four scoring parties – LP, APC, PDP and NNPP to the town hall,” the Director of the CDD, Idayat Hassan earlier said in a statement.
Commenting on the absence of the PDP presidential candidate at the town hall meeting, Okowa said Atiku secured permission from the organisers to be away.
The Delta governor said: “He(Atiku) is outside the country. We duly obtained the permission of the organisers for him to be represented.
“When it is time for debates, we will get into it. But this time, it is a town hall. Atiku has asked me to represent him.”
Also, Kola Abiola of the Peoples Redemption Party was later added to the list of candidates to participate in the event, while Adewole Adebayo of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has expressed his dissatisfaction with not being invited to the debate.
Adebayo in a series of tweets on his verified Twitter page described his exclusion and that of other presidential candidates from the debate as unfair.
He described the four candidates invited –Obi, Atiku, Tinubu and Kwankwaso as “the Liar, the Joker, the Dodger, and the Corrupt.”
“The *Arise News* Townhall Meeting with a misnomer called Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) fake Debate for @PeterObi, @atiku @officialABAT and @KwankwasoRM is a rude joke by failed politicians and their bankrupt media lap dogs to rig the 2023 election with a cover-up,” he said.
“How can there be a ballot revolution or people decide if all they have to choose are the Liar, Joker, the Dodger, and the Corrupt? This quartet stands for the 4 sides of the status quo that Nigeria needs to get away from if we want our country not to continue to be a crime scene.
“We need Nigerians to hear from every willing presidential candidate not a few selected by those accomplices who feed on the carcass and leftovers of proceeds of crimes via fake polls of dubious intent and opaque methodologies. Millions of voters are #ADEquate with #HopeAgain2023.”
Watch Arise TV Presidential Town Hall Meeting below…
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