Plateau Debate Group (PDG) Fixes January 26th, 2019 For State Governorship Debate, Select Six Governorship Candidates For The Live Debate

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Yakubu Busari

The Plateau Debate Group has made its commitment to host a live debate for the candidates vying for the office of the Governor of our state.

Dr. Daniel Meshak in a press statement made available to journalists in Jos on Saturday said, they also communicated that due to the limitation of time and space, they shall be unable to host all 22 candidates.

“We embarked on a painstaking process of pre-qualifying the top contenders for the office.”

According to the statement, “three criteria were used in this preselection process: the first criterion is the candidates’ popularity on a Facebook poll opened from the 12 December to the 23 December 2018; the second criterion was the candidates’ popularity in a field survey carried out in the three senatorial districts of the state.

The statement said, we also considered the incumbency factor as it is fair and natural that an incumbent should participate in a debate where several candidates are contesting for the office he occupies.

Following this rigorous process, we aggregated the scores of the candidates and have a shortlist of 6, listed alphabetically:

i. ABP – Samuel Dan-Auta Kyarshik

ii. ADP – Jon Temlong

iii. ANN – Alex Ladan

iv. APC – Simon Lalong

v. PDP – Jeremiah Useni

vi. SDP – Godfrey Miri.

You would recall that we had initially communicated that we would host 4 candidates in this debate. We were constrained to expand this number to 6 because the final aggregate scores were quite close and it would have been difficult to exclude any of the top 6 candidates fairly.

The statement reads, to accommodate this change, we have also negotiated for the debate to be aired for 3 hours, as against the earlier 2 hours proposed. It is our believe that this will give more time for a deeper, richer discussion.

In the days ahead, we shall be communicating these outcomes to the candidates and their parties officially. The debate is scheduled to take place on Saturday, 26th January 2019.

As always, we can be reached on our social media handles –

Twitter: @plateaudebate

Facebook: www.facebook.com/plateaudebate

YouTube: Plateau Debate Group

Email: [email protected] and [email protected]

We thank the public for keeping faith with us.

Be assured of our fairness, responsiveness, and accountability.

Signed: Dr. Daniel Meshak, 08069817644, 08064025778

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