BON's fraudulent Presidential Debate and APC hatchet job - Mr Rights

The recently released list of political parties to participate in the 2019 Presidential debate by the Nigerian Elections Debate Group (NEDG), Broadcasting Organization of Nigeria (BON) and Channels Television is a far cry from what is expected from a body that is expected to be neutral and independent.

The neutrality of the debate organizers were called to question, after the third force presidential candidate, Mr Olawepo Hashim of the People’s Trust (PT) was surprisingly omitted from the list of participants, in favor of little active Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN) and Young Democratic Party (YDP).

The vibrant Peoples Trust (PT) is one of the 28 newly registered political parties and the party is fielding frontline presidential candidate, Mr Olawepo Hashim.

In the recently released list of political parties fielding candidates for the 2019 general elections, the list of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) indicated that People’s Trust (PT) came top among the 28 newly registered parties, nominating almost 200 candidates.
While ANN, ACPN and YDP had a combined 141 candidates running in the 2019 election, People’s Trust (PT) has almost 200, more than combined candidates running on the other 3 parties joined together.

A critical analysis of the five selected political parties, whose candidates are to participate in the 2019 Presidential debate undoubtedly proved that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has every organizations involved in the selection process under control.

From all indication, the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) is using Channels Television and its partners for dirty job. Understanding that the general public would not fall for the possible propaganda of government owned NTA and Bola Tinubu owned TVC, the APC appeared to have engaged the service of Channels TV to hoodwink unsuspecting members of the public. It has become very clear that the APC is desperate to shut the door against serious contenders in the race to 2019 election.

The controversy that played out during the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN) primary election between Mr Olawepo Hashim and Fela Durotoye is still very fresh, in which the APC, through office of the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo was alleged to have hijacked ANN through Fela Durotoye, dishing out N1.3Billion to stop the emergence of Mr Olawepo Hashim.

The calculation within APC at the time was that, Fela Durotoye would help them waste the votes of aggrieved young Nigerians who will never vote for President Buhari. In their calculation, the emergence of any capable third force candidate like Olawepo Hashim will pose serious threat to the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari and they have to do everything possible to stop him.

Mr Hashim, who was very aware of the machination against him tactically maneuvered his way to form alliance with 10 other political parties with his majority faction of the ANN and he was adopted as the Presidential candidate of the alliance under the banner Peoples Trust (PT).

Surprisingly, after failing to stop Mr Hashim’s emergence as a presidential candidate, the ruling party also used the factional ANN chairman, Pastor Dania Emmanuel to deliver a fake prophecy to Oby Ezekwesili, who is obviously unprepared for any serious contest.

The pastor was alleged to have approached Madam Oby with a fake prophecy that she will be the next President. It was alleged also that, after convincing madam Oby that it was a prophecy from God, the pastor washed her feet with water and sprayed anointing oil on her. However, information emerged she was being tricked into the race for a specific purpose.

According to those familiar with the plot, the ruling party is aware that there are considerable women population who are very dissatisfied with the government and would not vote for the major opposition. These categories of people are looking for a credible third force to support, which Mr. Hashim has clearly become the favorite. But instead of allowing those people vote for a serious third force candidate, an unprepared madam Oby was tricked into the race to gain the confidence of dissatisfied women voters and deny a serious third force candidate the chance of winning them over.

The same calculation was advance for Prof Kingsley Moghalu, whose candidature is motivated by the need to have a president from eastern region, a zone the APC finds very difficult to penetrate. These 3 candidates, who are directly or indirectly in the race to serve the interest of APC are the same candidates fraudulently selected to feature in a debate with the two major parties. Those who did this selection did it on purpose. While they released a link for public voting as if the result of such voting counts, it appeared the online voting was only used as a smoke screen. The debate participants have been pre-selected even before the voting. It’s a hatchet job being done for the ruling party and this singular act has put the integrity of the organizers in question.

While responding to the criticism that followed the announcement in a private discussion, the organizers claimed that they carried out a research around the country to arrive at their final selection. When asked about the modality used in the said research, they claimed most of the new parties don’t have structures at the local level. But it was on record that out of all the 28 newly registered political parties in the country, Olawepo Hashim’s People’s Trust PT) has the highest number of nomination based on the release by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The question the organizers are yet to answer is, how can Fela Durotoye’s ANN with 21 nominations, Ezekwesili’s ACPN with 50 nominations and Moghalu’s YDP with 70 nominations be said to be more rooted than Olawepo Hashim’s Peoples Trust with about 200 nominations?

It maybe understandable if Sowore’s AAC with 30 nominations is excluded on that basis, but certainly, Olawepo Hashim’s Peoples Trust can definitely not be excluded on any basis.

More so, the weekly reports on the activities of Presidential candidates on social media was released few days ago and according to the report, Olawepo Hashim is currently leading all presidential candidates including the APC and PDP on Facebook engagements. In this past week, while Hashim has over 28,000 engagement, Atiku Abubakar had 24,000 and President Buhari has about 16,000.

So, considering Hashim’s online strength and his party’s structural spread and superiority at the grassroots, it is impossible for any of the 3 other parties to be ahead of Peoples Trust (PT) by whatever standard used in the selection.

Additionally, BON had claimed that they spent a whopping sum of N22 million on their acclaimed grassroot research, with considerable percentage of the researchers coming from government agencies. The public is yet to know those who sponsored the research and the interest they have.

Based on the above analysis, it could be conclusively said that, this presidential debate is designed to achieve a purpose by the ruling party and it should not be taken seriously by Nigerians, as Nigerian Elections Debate Group (NEDG), Broadcasting Organization of Nigeria (BON) and Channels Television have denied Nigerians an opportunity to a genuine debate.