As expected, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Muhammadu Buhari, was absent at the presidential debate organised by the National Elections Debate Group (NEDG) on Sunday.
He and his party had earlier vowed not to partake in the debate claiming that some members of the debate group were partisan and could have been compromised.
However, all the other candidates attended the debate that was broken into three sessions attended.
President Goodluck Jonathan, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) attended the second session and debated with four other candidates, including those of the United Peoples Party (UPP), Chief Chekwas Okorie; United Democratic Party (UDP), Godson Okoye; Kowa Party, Prof. Oluremi Sonaiya, and the National Conscience Party (NCP), Martin Onovo.
While they all reeled out their programmes, President Jonathan, said he would not habour corruption if re-elected as President of the country in the election that would hold on Saturday.
Jonathan claimed he had fought corruption using prevention, strengthening of institutions and re-orientation of the people as tools and that this had manifested in the introduction of e-payment system in the country as well as in the transparency in the distribution of fertilisers to farmers.
“Nigerians should change their mentality and condemn people with ill-gotten wealth. What we see is a situation where somebody gets wealth illegally and goes to his village and they give him a chieftaincy title,” Jonathan said.
“In the government circle, we used the IPPIS; no more use of raw cash; it cuts across all sectors and in that case you stop people from stealing public fund.”
On his part, the presidential candidate of NCP, Martins Onovo, said that no meaningful development would be achieved if corruption was not tackled.
Onovo, who decried the corruption rate in the country, said he would tackle the challenge if elected President.
While speaking on corruption, Prof. Oluremi Sonaiya of KOWA Party, said one of the ways to tackle corruption is to make public service less attractive and that this she promises to put in place if she becomes the President.
For Chekwas Okorie of the United Progressives Party (UPP), the tacking of corruption must begin from the leadership.
According to him, once the head is corrupt, every other part of system takes a clue.
He therefore promised to make assets declaration compulsory and made public and be reviewed annually.
“Security votes must be tied to only security matters and must be accounted for. Immunity must be limited to civil matters and all criminals must be tried,” Okorie said.
On education, President Jonathan said his administration was doing its best and promised to do everything within his powers to make Nigerian universities some of the best in the country.
The President noted that education was the responsibility of both states and the federal governments, and that his government had given support to the states through the Universal Basic Education Commission.
“We all feel bad that no Nigerian university was ranked but we are working seriously to change the trend. We have equipped most of our universities through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund. We are talking about infrastructure that has failed over the years but with the way we are going, in the next four years our universities will compete with other universities across the world,” he said.
The presidential candidate of UDP, Godson Okoye, said the Nigerian education was being destroyed by those who benefited from free education in the country. These people, he said, have turned education into business developing and establishing private schools.
He promised to do something about it if he eventually becomes President adding: “we must re-engineer education right from nursery schools; teachers training colleges must be revisited.”
Sonaiya, lamented that the focus was too much on paper qualification adding that for Nigeria’s education system to bounce back, the country must absorb a broad-based education system.
In their closing remarks, all the candidates solicited for support from the people of the country with President Jonathan insisting that the elections would not postponed again.
“Let me us this unique opportunity to thank Nigerians today for showing much interest in the electoral process and to re-assure Nigerians that elections will hold as scheduled by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ― the presidential election and the National Assembly election on the 28th of this month,” Jonathan said.
