Five days after the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu demanded that ThisDay apologise to him, he announced that he will shun the Arise TV town hall meeting.
ThisDay newspaper and Arise Television are both owned by Nduka Obaigbena, who Tinubu also demanded an apology from.
Announcing his decision to shun the town hall meeting, Tinubu said he was not contacted before he was listed for the town hall, describing the advertisement as professionally wrong and reckless.
In a press statement by Bayo Onanuga, the director of media and publicity for the APC presidential campaign council they urged Arise TV to stop using Tinubu’s name and portrait.
“Our attention has been drawn to an advertisement by Arise News in connection with a Town Hall meeting scheduled for 4 December,” he said.
“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,” the statement said.
Onanuga added that, “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 platform for all parties and all candidates, 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,” the statement said.
