By Wilfred Eya
Presidential candidates of the Labour Party(LP), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), yesterday, wooed voters as they marshaled out their programmes at The Arise News Presidential Town Hall ahead of the February 2023 presidential election.
Among those invited, three presidential candidates, Peter Obi (LP), Rabiu Kwankwaso (NNPP) and Kola Abiola (PRP) attended the event while the candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, was represented by his running mate, Ifeanyi Okowa.
The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress(APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had earlier turned down the invitation to the debate, the first in the series, and was replaced by Abiola.
According to the anchor of the programme, Dr Rueben Abati, the programme was strictly on security and economy.
On how they would have handle the security situation with regards to the Kaduna train incident, the LP presidential candidate said it was caused by failure of intelligence and processing of it.
He said the LP administration would have been more swift response and shown more empathy to the families affected.
Obi talked about the need for synergy among security agencies and promised to increase the personnel for more efficiency.
The NNPP presidential candidate, Kwankwaso decried the insufficient number of security personnel in the country. He also stressed the need to use technology to address the issue.
Dr Okowa said there was an urgent need to devolve the police force to give more responsibilities to the states.
Okowa promised that the PDP administration would employ more personnel and strengthen the security agencies particularly the police.
Kola Abiola decried the failure of the nation’s security architecture and promised to re-engineer the institutions of security.