The Campaign Council of the All Progressives Congress (APC), on Friday, said the party’s presidential flag bearer, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, will not attend the third edition of the presidential town hall meeting of Arise Television.
The Council disclosed this through a statement by its Director of Media and Publicity, Mr. Bayo Onanuga.
The television station had listed Tinubu among three other presidential candidates for the town hall meeting scheduled for December 4, 2022.
Onanuga, in the statement, berated the management of the station for listing Tinubu among candidates coming for the meeting without due consultation. He described the act 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.
“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.”