The Arise TV town hall meeting and ‘PDPAPC’ red flags

The Arise TV Town Hall Meeting & ‘PDPAPC’ Red Flagsilled as the first in the series of town hall meetings for candidates in Nigeria’s upcoming general elections in 2023. And Sunday’s event was specifically for presidential candidates of ‘frontline’ parties. The town hall meeting concept borrowed from America allows politicians to respond to questions from members of the public in attendance.  In attendance were the presidential candidates of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, People’s Redemption Party, PRP, Kola Abiola, and New Nigerian People’s Party, NNPP, Rabiu Kwankwaso.

However, the presidential candidates of the two major parties, Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling party All Progressives Congress, APC, refused to attend the Town Hall Meeting. This must be one of the reasons some people say the PDP and the APC are one, hence the PDPAPC. While Atiku’s running mate Ifeanyi Okowa (governor of Delta State) was there in his stead, Tinubu did not even bother to send anyone to represent him. So much has been said already about this Town Hall meeting: Honourable “fighting Dino” Melaye’s unruly ways, the fact that he wasn’t cautioned, allowing Okowa to seat among presidential candidates even though he’s not a presidential candidate, and Reuben Abati’s apparent partiality to his PDP colleagues (he was running mate to Buruji Kashamu on the Ogun State PDP governorship ticket in the 2019 election). Abati was helping to sell the deception that Atiku was on his way when it’s been reported that they knew he wasn’t planning to make the event. And of course, there’s Abati’s barely concealed contempt for Obidients although I think his issue is majorly with Igbos. But Abati will have his day soon enough.

For now, and for obvious reasons, I’m going to focus on the former governor of Lagos. Even though Atiku, the PDP candidate was also absent, between him and Atiku, Tinubu has been AWOL more times. This is the same Tinubu who thinks the presidency is his birthright, the one who has said it’s his turn (which he famously said in Yoruba “Emi Lokan”). Not to worry, Tinubu’s campaign organisation put out a statement to say why their candidate wasn’t at the Town hall meeting: Something to the effect of not wanting to favour one media house over the other, bla, bla. Even the little I read was insulting to me so I’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence by repeating what’s clearly blatant disrespect to Nigerians. As if that wasn’t blatant enough, Tinubu was attending a birthday party at the same time the Town Hall meeting was going on.  Then to further rub it in, the very next day on Monday, Tinubu was attending his own Town Hall meeting with farmers in Minna, Niger State.

If this were candidate Tinubu’s first refusal to speak at an event other presidential candidates were present, it will be okay to overlook and to give him the benefit of the doubt. In August 2022, Tinubu, former governor of Lagos, failed to honour the invitation to speak at the 62nd NBA (Nigerian Bar Association) Conference in Lagos. He was represented by his running mate, Kashim Shettima, former governor, Borno State. Atiku was present at that conference alongside the Labour Party presidential candidate and former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi. On October 12, Tinubu again refused to attend the ICAN (Institute of Chartered Accountants) conference. This was more confusing considering the fact that Tinubu is supposed to be a world-famous accountant. He had another opportunity about two weeks later to attend the Lagos State Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI on October 28 but Tinubu again refused. Instead, they set up some kind of ‘business summit’ later where his business friends and acolytes were in attendance.

Many things have now become very glaring: Alhaji Tinubu doesn’t care what most Nigerian people think or want. Perhaps he’s banking on using his considerable wealth to buy his way to Aso Rock Villa. Ordinarily, Tinubu being the candidate of the ruling party APC, should be doing the most. By all indices, APC has failed. Nigeria is worse off, the country has descended into the poverty capital of the world…Insecurity is rife. Hunger pervades the land. The economy is in shambles. The Nigerian currency (the Naira) is at its lowest…In any clime, the APC would be afraid to field a candidate as citizens would’ve been chasing them everywhere with rotten tomatoes and eggs. These items are now too expensive anyway. To top it off, Bola Ahmed Tinubu himself carries quite the baggage, not to mention his many scandals. Almost every address he gives yields a string of gaffes that produce endless memes (or explanations by the so-called experts). Who can forget his suggestion that Nigeria needed to send 50 million youth into the Army to solve unemployment because they could easily eat ‘cassava, maize and agbado’ (like maize and agbado don’t mean the same thing in Yoruba). Earlier on Tuesday, a story that has been in the news for a while was further validated when reports came that the United States has released certified copies of Tinubu’s alleged drug and money laundering charges in 1993 in the US.

The long and short of this: If presidential candidates, now that they need votes from the electorate, cannot care to speak to the people, what are the chances they are not going to do worse when they’re ensconced in the Presidential Villa? Right now, President Buhari has finally dropped any pretense of caring about what happens to Nigerians. In the middle of devastating floods, Buhari travelled out of Nigeria for a summit in South Korea. Bubu couldn’t be bothered to visit any of the flood-affected areas, but he was busy canvassing for aid to Pakistan. At the rate these ‘PDPAPC’ candidates are going, especially Tinubu who thinks he’s already president, Buhari will look like an angel. God forbid bad thing!