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Nobody could accuse
them of not giving prior warning. Close to a week before the
presidential and vice presidential debate organised by the Nigerian
Electoral Debate Group was to take place, the presidential candidates
of three political parties: the Action Congress of Nigeria; All Nigeria
Peoples Party and the Congress for Progressive Change had warned that
they would not participate in the debate with Goodluck Jonathan.

The three
gentlemen, Nuhu Ribadu, Muhammadu Buhari and Ibrahim Shekarau,
predicated their decision on the president’s absence at an earlier
debate organised by cable television station, NN24. Leaving the
president to stand on the podium by himself, the men must have decided,
is sweet revenge for their own perceived slight.

This argument is
alluring in its simplicity. Reduce the importance of the NEDG debate,
focus the energy of the candidates on other things (possibly) and put
President Jonathan in an uncomfortable position of being seen as aloof
and having to explain why this is so.

When the debate
took off Wednesday evening, there was only Mr Jonathan on the podium to
take questions from a panel drawn from the Nigerian Guild of editors,
Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria and the Nigerian Bar Association.

It is hard to see
how Messrs Buhari, Ribadu and Shekarau could see themselves coming out
as winners from the incident. Being alone on the stage did not diminish
Mr Jonathan’s carriage. He cut the image of relaxed assuredness, even
cracking jokes with the panellists. What is more, being alone allowed
him to put his views on the NN24 absence across to his audience –
unchallenged because his opponents decided to stay away.

It is possible
that, as a tactic, staying away probably served its purpose. There are
even insinuations that some of the candidates stayed away because they
did not quite perform well in the NN24 debate moderated by NEXT’s
Kadaria Ahmed. According to this rendering, the campaign managers of
these candidates would not then rather have them exposed to another
public grilling. This is probably tosh. But then, how do we know, when
the candidates did not show up to speak for themselves?

I, therefore, think
that the boycott is both wrongheaded and a strategic mistake. Even if
the candidates were aggrieved, participating in the Wednesday event
could only be a gain-gain situation for them. They would have, for one,
reached another set of Nigerians whom they couldn’t reach in the first
debate. They could have confronted Mr Jonathan on air directly and seek
to discomfit him. They would have appeared as statesmen who will not be
dissuaded by a little thing as having to debate without one of their
opponents.

Instead, they
appeared petty and petulant. And they handed the initiative to their
key opponent. I mean, who will readily pass over the opportunity to
address millions of Nigerians who listened to the debate on radio and
television – both terrestrial and cable. A candidate like Mr Shekarau,
who did rather well at the last debate, would have consolidated on
this. But he was nowhere to be found.

The debate caught me on the road, so I started off listening to it
on the radio. Reason why I even knew it started was because I and some
friends saw clusters of people around television sets on a street in
Ikeja, Lagos. A glimpse at one of the sets revealed the president in a
world of his own – taking questions and answering same in full glare of
Nigerians. Maybe he performed well, maybe he didn’t. His listeners will
have to decide that for themselves. But his lone appearance couldn’t
have hurt his campaign any.