A poll conducted by NOI Polls in early September has revealed that the 2023 presidential election is a three-horse race between the candidates of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi; All Progressives Congress, Mr Bola Tinubu; and Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, with Obi having an edge.
The APC Presidential Campaign Council has, however, rejected the polls describing it as “irresponsible, unscientific and biased.”
Also, the Atiku Campaign Organisation faulted the process and results of the poll, saying it lacked basics of a poll.
The poll, which was commissioned by Anap Foundation, showed that while both Tinubu and Abubakar were tied in the second position with 13 per cent each, Obi had 21 per cent with Dr. Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party polling three per cent.
According to a statement issued by Anap Foundation and signed by its chairman, Mr Atedo Peterside on Thursday, “The results showed a significant lead for Mr. Peter Obi with 21 per cent of voters proposing to vote for him if the presidential election were to be conducted today; and 13 per cent 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 per cent of voters proposing to vote for him.
“Mr. Peter Obi’s 8 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.”
The statement added “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. The gender split of undecided voters shows that 39 per cent of women are undecided versus 27 per cent of male voters.”
Anap Foundation also stated the September 2022 Polls were inconclusive in terms of establishing a clear winner, as the undecided voters were large enough to turn the tables. “However, Anap Foundation has concluded that the trends are clear enough to establish the front runners and so our subsequent polls will concentrate on the four leading candidates only.”
In a statement signed by the Director of Media and Publicity of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, on Thursday, the ruling party.
said it was unperturbed by what it described as ‘dubious NOI polls’.
The statement reads further, “The attention of the APC Presidential Campaign Council has been drawn to a poll conducted by the NOI Polls which made wild and incredible permutations on the presidential elections.
“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.”
It added: “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 its strings.”
The PCC said the ruling party was putting every necessary machinery in motion to win the presidential elections with a margin that would be too wide to contest.
It said the party’s candidate, Bola Tinubu recorded the highest votes of a senator across the country under the Social Democratic Party in July 1992 and would do it on the nationwide scale on February 25, 2023.
Spokesman of the Atiku Campaign Orgnisation, Daniel Bwala, who was on ChannelsTV, said: “A normal poll that will attract credibility would be a poll that clearly in one breath as you release the report, you must also release the sample size and the margin of error. These are basics because the sample size and the margin of error will help in identifying whether the polling was actually carried out correctly or not. Then, you can stretch further to ask for the sampling. Was it done by a phone call? If it was done by a phone call, then the people who didn’t have phone probably were not part of the polling.
“You also go to the extent of asking the demographics and then the place where the polling was carried out. I know they say is a random sampling. But then, because results, I am tempted to believe that this polling was carried out online because Peter Obi online has a measure of people who are very active for him, much more than other candidates. And I will tell you why, because there was an algorithm and data analytics that was carried out that came with the finding that 57.7 percent of people who follow Peter Obi and engage for him on social media do not live in Nigeria; in fact, majority of whom are both on twitter; they are not real human beings.
“If you take away 57.5 percent of people who are active for him, who probably live abroad and they don’t have voter cards and they are not likely to come home to vote, what it means is that Peter Obi is basking in the euphoria of hallucination and this polling is true reflection f that.
“I wouldn’t want to say that they are surrogates of Peter Obi. But the interesting thing you can find even go deeper about the pollsters that they are surrogates of Peter Obi.
“The interesting thing you can find out from the result is that if you look at it, a finding from 46 years to 59 and 61 above are the most that said they are willing to vote, meanwhile Peter Obi’s movement has the demography of the young people,” Bwala said.