The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), is collaborating with Arise Television to host series of presidential Town hall meetings, ahead of the 2023 General Elections.

Director of CDD, Idayat Hassan, in a statement on Sunday in Abuja, said the first of these sessions would hold on Sunday, and would air on Arise Television and some social media platforms.

According to Hassan, the Town hall discussions are imperative because the groups have identified the need to ensure citizens hear from the presidential candidates.

She said that this followed CDD’s constant campaign to ensure that the parties and candidates conducted issues-based campaigns.

The CDD director said that Nigerians needed to hear how their future leaders planned to address the rising level of insecurity, considerable economic challenges, and the impact of foreign affairs on domestic considerations.

“This has informed our engagements around the elections, from providing fact-checking support and working with partners, to providing analyses on the election security terrain.

“We are aware that there are questions surrounding the shortlisted candidates we invited to the first Town hall.

“However, this decision was not without reasoning or a set methodology.

“To ensure ample time was devoted to hearing each of the candidates, we ran a survey on Twitter from Oct. 4th to the 10th, asking citizens to vote on which four parties they wanted to hear from.”

Hassan said that all 18 political parties were listed in alphabetical order, and after the survey was closed, nine parties did not get any vote.

She said that the remaining nine received the following percentage of votes: African Action Congress (AAC), 20.7 per cent and All Progressives Congress (APC), 86.2 per cent.

She added that the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), received 6.9 per cent, Labour Party (LP), 96.6 per cent, New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), 51.7 per cent and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), 82.8 per cent.

Hassan listed others to include the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), 6.9 per cent, Social Democratic Party (SDP), 6.9 per cent and the Young Progressive Party (YPP), 13.8 per cent.

According to her, the result of this survey informed the group’s decision to invite the highest four scoring parties LP, APC, PDP and NNPP to the town hall.

“CDD is an independent and neutral institution, and is non-partisan or linked to any political party or candidate.

“The methodology stated above was set before the survey was sent out, to avoid any insinuation or claims of bias,” Hassan said.