The apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo has insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari must attend the upcoming presidential debate.
It stated this while reacting to the decision of Buhari to handover his re-election campaign to a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu.
Buhari, while inaugurating the APC Presidential Council, at the International Conference Centre, ICC, in Abuja, last week Monday, January 14, 2019 said that he was handing over his re-election campaign to Tinubu because he did not want governance to suffer.
But in an interview with Daily Post, Chuks Ibegbu, the deputy national spokesperson of the organisation, said Buhari must not send a proxy to the debate.
Also, the national publicity secretary of APC, Lanre Issa-Onilu, had disclosed that Buhari may not attend the debate if he feels there are other viable options with which he can engage Nigerians.
However, Ibegbu stressed that Buhari must appear in person and not Tinubu because he, the president, needs to tell Nigerians what he has done since assuming office.
According to Ibegbu: “We can’t preempt anything because we are not part of Buhari’s programme but he has a moral duty to talk to his people on why he wants to rule for another four years.
“He has to come and talk to Nigerians on what he has done in the past four years and what he intends to do in the next four years, he can’t do it by proxy.
“If he doesn’t talk to Nigerians then he has no moral right to lead us. Tinubu or no Tinubu he must tell Nigerians in person what he has done in the last three and half years and it must not be by proxy.”
