The Candidates: Let Kadaria Ahmed Be

The anchor of the town hall programme for Presidential candidates in the forthcoming 2019 general elections, The Candidates, Kadaria Ahmed has for sometime now since her latest engagement with the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP being in the eye of the storm.

And the question is why? And how appropriate?

For some people, especially those sympathetic to candidates of the PDP, her questions to their candidates were different from and more scathing than those asked the candidates of the rival Ill, so Progressives Congress, APC.

To those so untowardly bothered by this view, I ask should Kadaria have been seen to ask Atiku and Obi the selfsame questions she asked Buhari and Osibanjo, and possibly in the same way? 

To this people, aside failing to understand that Kadaria Ahmed, being the anchor of the programme reserves the prerogative right to ask questions of her choice, also and more pathetic, failed to understand that there is no way coming from different backgrounds that the two sides would have been asked similar class of questions. 

Whatever it is, the attempt to malign Kadaria Ahmed for the reason of performing her role as a broadcaster in this course, is undermining her right and it's unnecessarily prodding too much. The job of Kadaria as the interviewer was to dissect and cause the individuals to open themselves up for the electorates to know who their candidates are.

And Buhari, who came to the interview as a sitting president, wishing to offer himself for reelection, methinks it's better to focus on the things he has done and not able to do in his first stint. Kadaria, in her sitting with Buhari and Osibanjo focused on these necessities. Of course, it was obvious how the Buhari/Osibanjo duo and their team were uncomfortable.

Coming to the other side of the interview, where Atiku/Obi had come from a background of being in government, it was reasonable for Ms Ahmed to have beamed her light on what they did and were not able to do right in their periods of experience- as preamble. And then, the backlash of how she was unfair and how she acted a script came.

The methods Kadaria Ahmed used in both engagements showed professionalism and brought to bear her competence. The PDP sympathisers should have been grateful to this later, for digging deep and providing their principals the avenue to clearing long held opaque views. Ms Kadaria Ahmed merely did her job, and should not be ridiculed for it.