Presidential hopeful Atiku Abubakar has declared that he will not participate in any presidential debate unless President Bola Ahmed Tinubu also attends.
He said he had discovered that recent debates were designed to pit opposition parties against one another, describing the development as fundamentally wrong. According to him, the incumbent President should also be invited to participate in such debates.
The ADC candidate has, therefore, challenged Tinubu to an open debate, “which will provide an opportunity for both the ruling party and the opposition parties to address Nigerians on their policies,” ahead of next year’s election.
Abubakar, who is also the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), made the remark in a statement issued by his media aide, Kenneth Okonkwo, on Tuesday, amid the ongoing debates organised for political parties ahead of the 2027 general election.
One such debate was organised on Monday by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, during its annual conference, where presidential candidates of some political parties clashed over what they would do for Nigerians if elected into office next year.
Tinubu and Abubakar were not among those who attended the debate, even as the magazine has yet to confirm whether they were invited or not.
According to Okonkwo, the situation in which Tinubu refused to attend presidential debates while opposition candidates are set against one another is unacceptable. If the development persists, he said, Abubakar will not attend future debates.
“The situation in Nigeria today, in which presidential debates are organised among the opposition parties only, is therefore untenable. This has become a strategy that the failed, incompetent and corrupt APC government under Tinubu has been using to further instigate the opposition to attack each other while shielding itself from scrutiny by the Nigerian people,” Okonkwo said.
He added that Abubakar, as the leader of the opposition in the country, had now decided to make his attendance conditional on Tinubu’s participation in such debates.
He stressed that Abubakar would rather engage Nigerians through press conferences, town-hall meetings, interviews and other platforms to explain what he would do if elected into office.
“HE Atiku Abubakar, as the leader of the coalition of opposition parties and leaders, is left with no other choice than to make his appearance in any presidential debates conditional on the participation of President Bola Tinubu and the APC.
“There is no hiding place for APC in 2027.
“HE Atiku Abubakar is willing to engage the Nigerian people through interviews, town-hall meetings, press conferences, and any other forum of interaction with the people, but will not participate in any arrangement that will pit the opposition against itself and give undue advantage to APC,” the statement read.
