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The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC-PCC) has disclosed that the party's flag-bearer, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, will not honour the invitation of Arise Television to the third edition of the presidential town hall meeting.
What happened: The council also condemned Arise Television for using Tinubu's name in the promotional materials for the town hall meeting without securing his prior consent.
This was contained in the statement issued by the Director of Media and Publicity of the APC campaign council, Bayo Onanuga, in Abuja, on Friday, November 25, 2022.
The town hall series: Pulse reports that the presidential town hall meeting is a series organised by the broadcaster in collaboration with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD).
The third edition, slated for December 4, 2022, will focus on education, healthcare, poverty, and human capital, and Tinubu, alongside candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar; his counterpart in the Labour Party, Peter Obi and New Nigeria Peoples Party’s presidential hopeful, Rabiu Kwankwaso are all expected to grace the event.
APC slams Arise TV: Reacting to the Arise TV invitation, the camp of the APC candidate berated the management of the station for alleged attempt to railroad the former Lagos State Governor to fit into their agenda.
The council also described the action of the broadcaster as unprofessional and reckless.
The statement read: “Our attention has been drawn to an advertisement by Arise News in connection with a Town Hall meeting scheduled for 4 December.
“We are surprised that the TV station listed our candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as a participant, when there was no prior consultation with him and his aides and no consent of the candidate obtained for the advertisement.
“We deem this as professionally wrong and reckless. No media organisation should arrogate to itself the right to railroad any candidate to fit into its own agenda.
“As we said in an earlier statement, the busy and hectic campaign schedules of Asiwaju Tinubu will not permit him to honour all invitations from different radio and TV stations for debate and or Town Hall meetings hence our decision for him not to start with one media organisation and later ignore the others.
“In the absence of a unified and mutually acceptable all parties and all candidates platform, our candidate has been speaking directly to Nigerians, since President Muhammadu Buhari launched Tinubu’s Action Plan for a Better Nigeria.
“To date, over seven town hall meetings with strategic sectors have been held across the geopolitical zones, where the candidate and his running mate have spoken about their programmes.
“These direct engagements will continue before the election on 25 February 2023. We, therefore, urge Arise News to stop using our candidate’s name or portrait in its advertisement, forthwith.”