The political space in Nigeria was on Thursday at war over a poll that declared the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, as being ahead of others for the 2023 elections.
The poll, which result was released on Thursday, was commissioned by ANAP Foundation and conducted by NOI Polls.
The poll, which was conducted this month, points to a three-horse presidential race: Obi, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party.
It described Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party, who came fourth in the poll, as a “dark horse”.
A statement by the ANAP Foundation said: “The results showed a significant lead for Mr Peter Obi with 21% of voters proposing to vote for him if the presidential election were to be conducted today; and 13% each proposing to vote for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who are both tied in second place. Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso was a distant fourth with 3% of voters proposing to vote for him.”
The statement added that Obi’s eight percentage point lead at this early stage is significant, but not sufficient to separate him completely from a leading pack of candidates scoring 21 per cent, 13 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.
It said that undecided voters and those who prefer not to reveal their preferred candidate add up to a whopping 32 per cent and 15 per cent respectively, adding that the gender split of undecided voters shows that 39 per cent of women are undecided versus 27 per cent of male voters.
The percentage of registered voters according to ANAP Foundation is as follows in each of the zones: 99 per cent in the North East, 90 per cent in the South South, North Central and North West.
The lowest registered voter percentages were in the South East with 88 per cent and the South West with 85 per cent.
The Atiku Campaign Organisation dismissed the poll.
It said through its spokesman, Daniel Bwala: “Funny, polls are assessed by sample size and margin of errors.
“The Peter Obi surrogate polling company conjures something to inflate his ego and confuse voters into thinking cyber space translates to physical space.
“419 pollsters.”
The Campaign Council of the NNPP said the projections in the poll were self-seeking, self-serving, misleading, inaccurate and laced with partisanship.
Its spokesperson, Ladipo Johnson, said: “I would take it with a pinch of salt.
“This is a known template.
“In this season, we should expect many more dubious sounding opinions, polls, etc.
“Unfortunately there are many who for parochial reasons are drawing back the development of our democracy, due to various propaganda tricks.”
According to Johnson, the data purportedly relied upon did not go far enough in an empirical manner to show the ethnic and religious backgrounds of those polled.
He added that there was no indication as to whether those polled were artisans, educated or non educated, professional or non professional Nigerians among others.
He said: “The poll is to say the least bogus and an attempt to create the impression that the LP candidate has the potential to succeed when in actual fact the reality on ground is totally different.
“This is similar to a misleading poll they conducted before the Ekiti election.”
According to Johnson, the poll will only succeed in giving the LP supporters temporary euphoria.
The Director, Media and Publicity of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, rubbished the poll.
Onanuga, in a statement on Thursday, said: “We are unperturbed by these dubious and unreliable statistics because our research shows that NOI Polls have been off the mark at critical election periods in recent times.
“For example, preparatory to the March 2015 presidential elections, NOI published in October 2014 the results of a ‘Viability Poll’ which used the concepts of Familiarity and Net Favourability Position to survey.
“In the results, NOI claimed that President Goodluck Jonathan has the best overall familiarity rating at 99% and Net Favourability Probability of ±25.
“By contrast, NOI dismissed the then All Progressives Congress candidate, Muhammadu Buhari as a ‘borderline candidate’ who needed ‘huge public relations’ to shore up his performance.
“But when the Nigerian people went to the polls, who won?
“The APC candidate and now President, Muhammadu Buhari.
“This is not the only instance when the NOI has turned its political bias in an election period to fraudulent statistics.
“Towards the 2019 presidential elections, and knowing fully that President Muhammadu Buhari was going for re-election for a second term in office, the NOI pollsters embarked on another abracadabra.
“In June 2017, they issued the results of another poll, that Nigerians prefer a middle-aged president claiming that this poll was inspired by the election of Macron as the president of France and the campaign of the Not Too Young To Run.
“According to the predictable bias, NOI claimed that 64% said they would prefer to vote for a presidential candidate between the ages of 40 and 50 years and 15% preferred candidates between 51 and 60.
“In short, for a presidential candidate in his 70s running for re-election, NOI results meant certain defeat.
“But when the Nigerian people went to the polls on February 23, 2019, the man the NOI polls had tried to bully with statistics out of the race won again.
“It is significant that at the time NOI was generating the unrealistic figures to boost the ego of President Jonathan, a more serious and independent team of pollsters-Neo-Telligence based in the United Kingdom used geo-demographics and public sentiment analysis to forecast the emergence of President Buhari.
“By contrast, their empirical analysis showed that two years before the 2015 presidential elections, Goodluck Jonathan’s public approval rating on corruption, insecurity and the economy had nosedived across most of the battleground states.
“Our objective profiling of NOI Polls as an anti-APC research organisation is grounded on the aforesaid facts and that is why we believe this present report is, in the language of Nigerians, ‘wuruwuru to the answer’.
“We know as a matter of fact, the owners of NOI and where their political interest lies and wish to advise NOI to stop polluting the political system with irresponsible, unscientific and biased polling so that we don’t expose the puppeteers pulling it’s strings.
“Our party is putting every necessary machinery in motion to win the federal elections with a margin that will be too wide to contest.
“Our candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu recorded the highest votes of a senator across the country under the Social Democratic Party in July 1992.
“He will do it on nationwide scale on February 25, 2023.”
The candidate of the African Action Congress for the presidential election, Omoyele Sowore, said the involvement of founding father of ANAP Basis, Atedo Peterside, rendered it biased.
Sowore wrote on his facebook page: “@AtedoPeterside shouldn’t be conducting opinion polls. He lacks the credibility to conduct any polls.
“He’s @PeterObi’s campaign mgr.
“That is like Lagos NURTW/@Mcoluomo9 conducting a ballot that states that @officialABAT would win the 2023 presidential election.
“Cease rigging polls!”
But the Labour Party said it stands by the poll.
The party’s National Chairman, Julius Abure, said: “PDP and APC’s time is up.
“Nigerians have made up their mind to do away with them.
“The mood of the people is very clear and the reason for this are not far-fetched: the government of PDP and APC have been impoverishing the people.
“People are hungry with poverty in the land.
“As we speak, inflation rate is 19.5 percent out.
“No fewer than 100 million are living below the poverty line.
“So, what kind of country is this when you cannot travel from Abuja to Benin or from Abuja to Kaduna.
“The insecurity in the country is ravaging every person in the country, the rural dwellers who used to live on substituent farming can no longer go to farm and fishermen can no longer fish in the water.
“But it’s good for them to continue to deny it and undermine us.
“I agree entirely with the report because it captures the mood of the people.
“Let them continue to deceive themselves.
“If they are saying it is not correct let us wait and see what happens in 2023.”