It is understandable why the Labour Party will withhold their presidential candidate from attending debates or similar public forums if his counterparts in the All Progressives Congress and Peoples Democratic Party do not show up. Appearing at such venues while fellow contestants get to pretend they are busy doing better things can diminish. Why fritter your worth on low-stakes engagements in a society where debates do not necessarily win you an election? Yet, the LP can do better than make Obi’s (dis)appearance a mere reaction to his counterparts. Debate forums are an essential aspect of democratic processes because they are spaces to advance and defend the ideas and ideologies that determine the fate of the nation.
Serious politicians use such platforms to coherently articulate their understanding of issues, advance their plans and projections, and highlight how they intend to deliver on their visions. That is also why you should hardly expect the APC candidate — and even that of the PDP who will take the cue — to refuse to show up. That is not how they know to win elections.
Yes, the APC presidential campaign rambled several excuses justifying the failure of their candidate, Bola Tinubu, to be at Sunday’s town hall meeting organised by AriseTV. He will possibly also avoid future gatherings where he will have to speak extemporaneously to a crowd not pre-selected for his benefit. Truth is, he would be foolish to attend presidential debates. He would be far better off being jeered for running away than risking the thorough self-demystification that will follow his appearance at those forums. There is no benefit for him to subject himself to any town hall meetings, debates, and even media interviews outside the arrangee shows his aides create for him.
.
Outside those spaces, Tinubu is very vulnerable. His handlers will be smart to keep him away from scrutiny. I do not expect him to go to any debate they have not specially curated for him to shine. If Tinubu should attend a presidential debate, I can imagine how flustered he will be if he has to answer the lingering question of how he became a bagman for a drug cartel and the moral implications for the nation. For a man whose gaffes already supply comedians, skit makers, meme-makers, and TikTokers with content, he will be a self-writing joke for a whole week. He has survived his public engagements by depending on a battery of ghostwriters, speech writers, and spin doctors who pretend they can extract sense from the incoherence of a man whose political philosophy is built on the infrastructure of the stomach.
The question for the rest of us is how to proceed from here. Debates are crucial to inscribe the ethos of democracy, but what do you do when the candidates of the so-called major parties are unlikely to attend them? They are wedded to the tactics of winning elections based on the sentiments of religion and ethnicity, and public debates expose them. The PDP vice presidential candidate represented his team on Sunday but asking presidential candidates to debate the vices (pun intended, yes!) of their opponents is demeaning. If the APC/PDP candidates continue to stay away from public forums, it will be unfair to continue to ask the third-party candidates to perform the mental and physical labour while the APC and PDP reap the benefits of not getting scrutinised.
At the same time, I worry when parties like the LP calibrate the public appearances of their candidate on who else shows up or not. The point of having a third party was not to merely replicate the toxicity that characterises the supposedly big two. It was to break the stasis they represent. The goal was to depart from the standard political means — which had become wholly oppressive and entirely non-regenerative — and to begin forming new habits. Obi’s handlers should rethink how they can balance the ethical necessity of subjecting their candidate to public dialogue without risking his overexposure.