…As Ezekwesili advocates lawsuit to compel reluctant candidates
The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has cancelled its scheduled presidential debate for the 2023 elections.
The debate was scheduled to hold next week in Abuja as part of the National Economic Summit (NES#28).
Organisers of the summit shelved the debate over what they described as “unfavorable climate”.
In place of the debate, NESG said it will organise a town hall meeting for presidential candidates of the political parties at a later date.
The NESG chairman, Asue Ighodalo, confirmed the change of plan while responding to questions from journalists after a scheduled pre-summit briefing.
Ighodalo said there must be a minimum level of issues that presidential aspirants must sign on to.
He said the NESG had “hoped there would be a debate, but the prevailing climate is not suitable for it anymore.
“However, we are planning a town hall arrangement. It’s fundamental each aspirant tells Nigerians how he intends to tackle each sector of the economy. The public can then take them up copiously sector by sector. There will be no aspirant that will say I don’t know. I promise this,” he said.
Ighodalo projected that “in five years, Nigeria can become a leading industrializing and reforming nation in Africa that focuses on building its State capacity and capabilities”.
Within that period, Nigeria, he said, “can break free from decades-long political, policy, legislative and regulatory binding constraints.”
Meanwhile, a former Minister of Education, Dr Oby Ezekwesil, has proffered a solution to the continued absence of some presidential candidates at pre-election debates in the country.
The co-convener of the BringBackourGirls Movement was reacting to the absence of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) counterpart, Atiku Abubakar, at Sunday’s presidential town hall series organised by Arise TV in Abuja.
The former minister, through a series of tweets on her Twitter handle on Wednesday, proposed a class action suit that would compel front-runner presidential candidates in the country to attend debates ahead of the 2023 general elections.
She argued that the debates are important to keep citizens informed about the plans of those jostling to rule them.
Ezekwesili wrote: “I want to co-lead a class-action suit asking the courts to compel all the front-runner Presidential candidates to show up for debates that will better inform the choices of the Nigerian people in the 2023 elections.
“As it stands today, there is annoyingly no constitutional/legal imperative on the presidential candidates to show up for debates. However, one thing we know about democracy is that there are many ways for citizens to collectively signal their priorities for the reform of politics.
“A class action suit compelling presidential candidates to debate shows our preferred conduct from those seeking our votes even when legal lacunae provide them escape. Yes! Collectively going to court on this matter is crucial for that purpose.”