2023: Candidates Must Discuss Programs, Past Achievements During Campaign – Falana

Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana SAN, has advised fellow Nigerians to measure the competence and capacity of political candidates by their programs and previous achievements in society during the ongoing campaigns ahead of the 2023 general elections.

Falana said this in Arise News interview on Wednesday when he was asked to share his opinion on Bola Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress, People’s Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party.

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He said he was not very comfortable discussing candidates, but was concerned with their programs.

He explained that political candidates at all levels must prove how capable they are by providing evidence of what they accomplished at least within the last 8 to 24 years.

“Our position is that we are not limiting ourselves to presidential candidates as you guys are doing in the media, no; legislators, governorship and councillorship candidates, so that you(political candidates) will tell Nigerians what you have done in the last 4, 8 or 24 years before we can vote for you,” he said.

On programs, Falana advised Nigerians should vote for whoever will be prepared to address insecurity and youth unemployment.

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“Nigeria has 20 million out there on the streets as beggars and school dropouts, we are competing with Pakistan now in terms of the number of out-of-school children.

“We want a political party that will show a commitment that we are going to implement the Universal Basic Education Law 2004 which prescribes that every child shall be in school at the expense of the state for the first 9 years but we will want to go beyond that and insist this country has enough resources to educate all our children.

“We want a political party that will say since torture has been prohibited and proscribed in Nigeria by the Anti-torture Act 2017, we are going to show a commitment as a Government never to allow any Nigerian to be tortured,” he said.

Falana maintained that programs must be discussed during the campaigns and the Nigerian workers under the aegis of the Nigerian Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress should adopt the politician that will meet their demands in relation to good working conditions.

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