‘No prior consultation’ — Tinubu campaign says he won’t attend Arise TV town hall meeting

The Bola Tinubu campaign organisation says its presidential candidate will not attend the Arise TV town hall meeting.

TheCable had reported that the third edition of the presidential town hall series, organised in collaboration with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), is scheduled to hold on December 4.

The edition will focus on issues around education, healthcare, poverty, and human capital.

In a statement on Friday, Bayo Onanuga, spokesman of the campaign organisation, said the former governor of Lagos will not attend the town hall meeting as there was no prior discussion on the matter.

“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,” the statement reads.

“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.

“Till 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.”

Tinubu was absent at the previous edition of the town hall meeting.