Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, Kwankwaso for debate today

Front runner presidential candidates in the 2023 general elections; Asiwaju Bola Tinubu (All Progressives Congress); Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (Peoples Democratic Party; Peter Obi (Labour Party) and Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso (New Nigeria Peoples Party) are expected to speak at a debate today (Sunday).

The debate is organised by pro-democracy group, the Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD) in collaboration with Arise Television.

According to the group, the leading presidential candidates are expected to speak on their plans for the country.

She said the CDD, ahead of the 2023 elections, identified the need to ensure citizens hear from the presidential candidates.

“This has informed our engagements around the elections, from providing fact-checking support and working with partners to provide analyses on the election security terrain,” Hassan stated.

Hassan said, “To ensure ample time devoted to hearing each of the candidates, we ran a survey on Twitter from October 4 to 10, asking citizens to vote on which four parties they wanted to hear from.

“The remaining nine received the following percentage of votes- African Action Congress – 20.7 per cent, APC – 86.2 per cent, All Progressives Grand Alliance – 6.9 per cent, LP – 96.6 per cent, NNPP – 51.7 per cent, PDP– 82.8 per cent , Peoples Redemption Party – 6.9 per cent, Social Democratic Party – 6.9 per cent and Young Progressive Party – 13.8 per cent.

“The result of this survey informed our decision to invite the highest four scoring parties – LP, APC, PDP and NNPP to the town hall.

“The CDD is an independent and neutral institution and is non-partisan or linked to any political party or candidate. The methodology stated above was set before the survey was sent out to avoid any insinuation or claims of bias.

“We do not expect this to be the sole platform for candidates to engage with the electorate.”