The African Action Congress (AAC) has kicked against the exclusion of its presidential candidate, Omoyele Sowore, in Tuesday’s signing of the Abuja Peace Accord and the January 19, 2019 presidential debate.
The party’s stance was conveyed in a statement by Dr. Malcolm Fabiyi, Director-General of the TakeItBack Movement/Sowore 2019 Campaign on Tuesday.
President Muhammadu Buhari and 68 other presidential candidates attended the signing of the accord in Abuja on Tuesday.
However, Sowore, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Oby Ezekwesili of Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN) were absent at the signing.
But Atiku and Ezekwesili were included in the presidential debate while Sowore was excluded.
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According to the organisers, the Nigerian Elections Debate Group (NEDG) and the Broadcasting Organisations (BON), the participating parties are: “Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN), All Progressives Congress (APC), People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Young Progressives Party (YPP)”.
But the AAC said, “We demand to know the criteria that were used for selecting the parties that will participate in the debates.
“The AAC is one of the three largest parties in Nigeria. In fact, we were within the top three parties in the online poll that was organised by Channels TV to determine the participants in the presidential debates. We demand that the unaltered results of that poll be published.
“It is unconscionable that our candidates will be left out of the VP and Presidential debates when smaller political parties that fared worse in the polls, and do not have the reach or strength that our party commands across the country, were included.
“We also note that our presidential candidate has won every major independent and objective poll against the candidates from the alternative parties. Yet somehow, those parties made it to the debates while our candidates did not.
“We demand that NEDG and BON publicly declare the criteria that were used for selecting the participants. Any debate about Nigeria’s future and the 2019 elections that does not include the AAC is a farce. Nigerians cannot be fooled.
“We expect that this grave injustice will be rectified immediately, ahead of the VP debates on December 14. Nigerians must not be cheated out of a robust debate about our nation’s future. Nigeria MUST progress.”
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