IPC begins tracking Tinubu’s campaign promises

Renowned media monitoring organisation, the International Press Centre on Tuesday launched a compendium to track the campaign promises of President Bola Tinubu.

The document contained the campaign promises made by Tinubu during the 2023 electioneering period.

The Executive Director of IPC, Lanre Arogundade, stated this during a stakeholders’ roundtable presentation of documented campaign promises of the President and the launch of media election IOs and Web app in Abuja.

The PUNCH reported that one major issue thrown up during every election cycle in Nigeria had been the debate on whether politicians contesting for public offices would fulfill their promises made during electioneering.

Since the return of democracy in 1999, this challenge with politicians had made it difficult for the public to trust most of their campaign promises.

Arogundade emphasised the need to document and track the promises made by politicians during a campaign to ensure accountability and transparency in governance.

He said, “During the campaigns, we documented the campaign promises of all the presidential candidates which is normally our tradition to publish that of the President so that we can look at his promises in our respective beats, maybe in the area of sports, health education, whichever appeals to us and we can then begin to look at how they are implemented.

“These days, we talk of solution-driven journalism, but you can’t have solutions when you don’t pick promises, follow them up and ensure that they are actually implemented. We also need to ask questions if there are challenges to implementation or if there are changes to that plan. That is what we call democratic accountability.

“We would have been happy if we were able to document the campaign promises of all elected governors as well. This is one of the challenges that we’re throwing at our colleagues. Anybody can do this.”

While lamenting that the media have not lived up to expectations in terms of holding political officeholders accountable, Arogundade said it was time the media stopped allowing politicians set the agenda, especially during elections.

He added, “I will say that we have not lived up to expectation in that aspect. One of the things we talked about in terms of the role of the media is to set agenda at elections but often it is the politicians that set the agenda for us and they are clever at doing this. They come up with statements, they attack themselves and we’ll begin to report that and then forget the issues.

“But when the elections are over, we also don’t remind ourselves of those things that are promised or go back to them. That is why I said we have not lived up to expectation and we’re hoping that this time around, things will be different by making use of these documented campaign promises.”

He also stressed the need for constitutional protection for press freedom in Nigeria.

According to him, the IPC and other partners would engage the 10th National Assembly on the existing media laws and how the laws can be favorable to the media.

Arogundade said, “We just came back from Owerri where we had the convention of the Nigerian Guild of Editors. One of the issues that also came up is the fact that we need to push for constitutional protection for press freedom in Nigeria. That is what makes the media in Ghana for example, better than in Nigeria.

“It is written in the Ghanaian constitution that government shall not do anything to tamper with press freedom. It is also written that the government shall not appoint the Editors of even the government media. That responsibility is that of the National Mass Media Commission. So, there are constitutional aspects to this. We are not closing our eyes to the fact that we are often endangered when we try to hold governments accountable.

“We’re also hopeful that the new government too, will be media friendly. We’re hopeful that those who are editors, those who are journalists will be working with this government will remember the constituency they’re coming from, it will be too bad if, at the end of the day, they begin to justify attacks on journalists.”

On his part, media aide to the President, Tunde Rahman, represented by a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Ayo Oyalowo, assured Nigerians that the President will fulfill all promises made during the campaign.

According to him, with just a few weeks in office, Tinubu has demonstrated that he will not disappoint Nigerians with some key actions he had taken.

He said, “I remember the President during his acceptance speech, said and I quote, ‘I will form a government of national competence’, now, we can see that from the few appointments he has made. This is a President that is prepared to govern. I can tell you that this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are greater things to come in the coming days.”