CHANNELS TV'S OSUN GOVERNORSHIP DEBATE AND THE SPN

SPN's Alfred Adekoge  campaigning on the streets

Choosing five candidates out of 48 is limiting people's choice. It's like narrowing people's choice to 5. It's tantamount to rigging election in favour of the 5 candidates. It portrays others as not serious, even when they're on the street campaigning.

It also denies the voters the right to choices. It gives ample opportunity to moneybags, who might have had access to cheap, albeit looted money, to manipulate our electoral system. More so the relevant laws and extant rules are against all attempt to conduct election before legal election, or favouring some contestants against others, by media organizations.

The Channels TV Osun Debate clearly shows this. All the five contestants featured have one way or the other being part of governments that put us in the mess we find ourselves. All of them became rich through access to public resources. And it is from these ill-got monies that they use to buy media space, including the governorship debate (by sponsoring and mobilising a lot of votes for the debate).

Also, in terms of ideas, there's nothing fundamentally different in what they are saying. While all of them promised to maintain financial prudence, there was no concrete definition of what this means. Indeed, when Iyiola Omisore, SDP candidate, who appeared like the most radical critic of the Aregbesola government at the debate, was asked if he would retrench workers in a bid maintain financial prudence, he avoided the question. Don't also forget that excuse of financial prudence is used by Aregbesola/APC government to pay fractional salaries. While Omisore said he would stop the Opon Imo project, he did not say what his programme would be in terms of modernising education especially through ICT.

 Meanwhile, Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) and its candidate, Alfred Adegoke, who was not invited, have radically different approach to financial prudence, which includes cutting the salaries of governor and all appointed government officials to that of civil servants; removing all frivolous allocations and spendings e.g. N500 million per month security vote (an amount that can fund many social programmes), and putting an end to the fraudulent contract system that has become legal and illegal means of siphoning public funds, and replacing it with a functional, well-funded, adequately staffed Ministry of Works to undertake government projects like construction of roads, schools, mass housing, hospitals, water projects, etc. Aside this saving billions, it would also employ tens of thousands of decent and pensionable jobs.

Also, none of the 5 candidates promised free and quality education and health care. Meanwhile, these are cardinal programmes of Alfred Adegoke and SPN. With SPN in the debate, real issues like these would have formed the basis of debate. Therefore, it was a coup against the people by denying them the right to hear genuine alternative programmes.

Channels TV could have successfully organized the debate in batches. This was what Rave FM did, inviting 2 or 3 candidates per day. The poll organised by channels TV is a sham. It was like the Big Brother Naija "vote your candidate". The more money yoy can dole out for votes, the higher the chances of participating in the debate.

These are the real issues:   SPN's Pro-Masses Programme in Graphics

By Kola Ibrahim
Secretary, SPN Osun State