The NN24 presidential debate: an insider’s story - By Mohammed Haruna   Newsdiaryonline Tue March15,2011

Last Friday Thisday led its edition for the day with a story that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has pulled out of the presidential debate NN24, the Lagos based African affiliate of CNN, had announced it was organising for this year’s election. This would not be the first time that the party would do so.

When the country’s third attempt at democracy started in 1999, there was widespread expectations that that it would be prefaced by a lively debate between the three-in-two political parties the departing soldiers had midwived; with a little wink from the soldiers who wanted to ensure a South-Westerner emerged as president as their penitence for “June 12”, the somewhat provincial Alliance for Democracy (AD) was allowed to swallow the bigger and more broad-based All Peoples Party (APP) to square up against the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) behemoth in the April 1999 presidential elections.

PDP’s candidate was a seemingly reluctant General Olusegun Obasanjo, fresh from General Sani Abacha’s gulag. That of the AD/APP contrivance was Chief Olu Falae, arguably the most eloquent Secretary of the Government of the Federation this country has seen.

A much publicised debate between the two was organized by the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria ahead of the elections. Only Chief Falae turned up.

Since then PDP as the ruling party since 1999 has, not inexplicably, been reticent about engaging the opposition and the public in debates over its record which, to put it mildly, has not exactly been a shining example of efficiency, accountability and transparency.

However with the party never missing any opportunity in touting the doctorate degree of President Goodluck Jonathan as its candidate in this year’s presidential election, one had thought that the party had finally overcome its apparent phobia for presidential debates.

Thisday’s lead story last Friday must then have come as a surprise to many. It certainly came as a surprise to me as someone NN24 had recruited to help organise the debate.

According to the newspaper the party withdrew from the debate for four reasons, actually five. Three were offered by Malam Abba Dabo who seems to have taken over the job of speaking for the president’s campaign organization from the trenchant Mr. Sully Abu, incidentally both of them my good friends and colleagues from our youthful days at the New Nigerian in the late seventies and early eighties.

The fourth reason was offered by Mr. Oronto Douglas, President Jonathan’s Special Adviser on Strategy Documentation and Research.

Abba’s excuses were that his principal, the president, was not properly invited and that the vice-president who was to participate in the fore-runner debate billed for the Friday in question, had prior engagements. He also reportedly said PDP was too busy campaigning to have time for the debate.

“We,” Thisday quoted him as saying, “were not properly invited. Moreover, the vice-president will be attending a PDP reconciliation meeting in Kano tomorrow (Friday) and so he will not be attending. The party is currently in the middle of its campaign and therefore PDP will not be participating in the television debate, whether for the presidential or for the vice-president.”

For Mr. Douglas, the excuse was that there were too many organisations trying to organize the debates. No fewer than four organisations, he reportedly said, had invited his principal to participate in their debate.

There was indeed a fifth excuse, this time from Thisday itself. “It was further gathered,” the newspaper said, “that PDP backed out of the television debate because there was no concrete agreements on the nature of the questions to be asked and how to admit the studio audience.” Obviously this was the newspaper’s own conclusions from talking to PDP officials.

I first got involved in the NN24 debate when Mr. Clem Baiye, also a friend and colleague from our early years at the New Nigerian phoned me in January on behalf of the television station and asked if I’ll like to join him to organise the debate. It was my pleasure I said. We did not – and still have not – discussed any terms.

My assigned role was to invite three of the four NN24 had decided, quite rightly in my view, were the most credible presidential candidates in a somewhat crowded field of nineteen or so. These were the president (PDP), former head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari (Congress for Progressive Change [CPC]), Kano State governor, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau (All Nigeria Peoples Party [ANPP]) and former anti-corruption czar, Malam Nuhu Ribadu (Action Congress of Nigeria [ACN]).

I invited all three, two, Buhari and Ribadu, by personal delivery and Shekarau through his spokesman, Malam Sule Ya’u Sule. All three accepted the invitation.

My other role was to act, along with Clem who was to handle the presidential side of the invitations, as a consultant of sorts on the editorial aspects of the debate.

A series of meetings between NN24 management and its representatives with various officials of the parties culminated into that of March 1 where representatives of all four parties were present. This was to agree the modalities of the debate.

I was not present at that meeting but I was later informed that, among other things, there was an agreement that, in keeping with global best practices, no specific questions would be given to the participants in advance and that each party should provide 100 of its members as audience-participants.

The following day The Nation leaked the story in the inside pages of its Lagos edition but as lead in its Abuja edition. The story, which said PDP alone of the four parties had insisted on seeing the specific questions in advance as a condition for participation, was clearly calculated to put the party in bad light.

Whoever leaked the story to The Nation obviously did so in bad faith and he nearly scuttled the debate.

Before the March 1 meeting, I’d spoken with Abba to ask him to intervene with the management of Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) which seemed hostile to the idea of hooking up to the debate due to some past disagreement with NN24. He said he would.

I too had spoken with the NTA Director-General, Malam Usman Magawata. There has been mutual respect between the two of us. But on this one it seemed his respect for me was not sufficient to overcome the deep animus between the two organisations. Hence my request to Abba to plead with the NTA management.

After that I spoke to Abba several times over the progress of the arrangements for the debate. On no occasion did he say the PDP was pulling out. On the contrary he was the one who told me he had suggested changes in the date for the presidential debate from March 15 to 18 to accommodate the president’s punishing campaign schedule.

You can then imagine my shock when he called me on the eve of the vice-presidential debate to say Vice-President Namadi Sambo would no longer be participating. He gave me the same excuses quoted by Thisday. I told him the reasons were really not tenable; the Kano PDP crisis had by then been resolved in favour of Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso and the reconciliation of factions in any party is work-in-progress.

As for the PDP not being properly invited, I didn’t know what else could have been more proper than his own involvement and that of other senior PDP and government officials in the negotiations over the arrangements for the debate.   

To compound matters for the NN24 team, the Buhari campaign organisation soon responded to the story about the PDP pulling out by saying their principal’s running mate, Pastor Tunde Bakare, too would not come if the vice-president does not.

By some miracle NN24 still pulled off the debate last Friday without the vice-president. However it was unable to transmit it live as originally planned due to what it suspected was official sabotage. My own investigation - and I could be wrong - suggests the problem was a technical hitch that had nothing to do with government or even the PDP.

Whatever the cause, NN24 has since transmitted the debate repeatedly and it has even gone viral with a few social media posting it on their websites. Every one of my friends who had watched it say the debate was great and its moderator, Kadaria Ahmed, the Editor of NEXT, superb.

Since its transmission there appears to have been a rethinking by government on the wisdom of staying away from NN24’s, and, in spite of a statement issued on Monday by his spokesman, Mr. Ima Niboro, to the contrary, the president may yet take part in the next one this Friday.

 But if he still avoids it, it would not be because, as Abba has said in effect, the president’s rally tours are more important than debates as forums for selling his programmes. Precisely because of their noisy and carnival atmosphere rallies cannot compare with debates as forums for canvassing ideas and programmes.

Again if the president stays away it would not be because, as Oronto Douglas said, there are too many cooks stirring the debate pot. As he has reportedly said, no more than four organisations have invited his principal to participate in their debates. Four is hardly a crowd. But even if it is, it does not help the president’s image to accept an invitation to a debate in principle only to chicken out because of apparent fears that, as is the case with NN24’s, he cannot control its outcome.     

Advertising