The All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) have reacted angrily to a poll that placed Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party ahead in the 2023 presidential race.
The poll, commissioned by Anap Foundation and conducted by NOI Polls Limited, has placed Obi as winner of the 2023 presidential race with 21 percent of votes.
According to a statement by Anap Foundation on Thursday, Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar, candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), respectively, are tied in second place with 13 percent of votes.
Described as a “dark horse”, Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) is fourth “with 3% of voters proposing to vote for him”.
Reacting to the development in a statement, Bayo Onanuga, spokesperson of APC presidential campaign council, described the result as “dubious and unreliable statistics”.
Onanuga made reference to a previous poll conducted by NOI Polls prior to the 2015 presidential election, which had projected victory for Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP.
“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’,” he said.
“The NOI has chosen the preferred candidate and has decided to use fake, dubious statistics to package him to the Nigerian voters.
“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.”
‘BOGUS, CONCOCTED DATA’
Ladipo Johnson, spokesperson of the NNPP presidential campaign council, queried “the sampling method used in arriving at the obviously unverifiable or concocted data”.
“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.,” he said.
“Unfortunately, there are many who for parochial reasons are drawing back the development of our democracy, due to various propaganda tricks.
“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.
“The NNPP insists that the complete process of the poll should be published. If not, the poll cannot be taken seriously.”
Speaking on Thursday in an interview on Channels Television, Daniel Bwala, spokesperson of the Atiku Abubakar presidential campaign, faulted the technique used for the poll.
“A normal poll that will attract credibility will be a poll that will clearly release the sample size and the margin of error as the report is being released, because the sample size and the margin of error will help in identifying whether the polling was actually carried out correctly or not,” he said.
“Then, you can further ask for the sampling. Was it done through a phone call? If it was done through a phone call, then the people who did not have phones were probably not part of the polling.
“You also go to the extent of demographics and the place where the polling was carried out. I know they said it was a random sampling. But then, because of the result, I’m tempted to believe that this polling was carried out online because Peter Obi has a number of people who are very active for him online much more than the other candidates.
“I will tell you why: There was an algorithm search and data analytics that was carried out that came up with the finding that 57.5 percent of people who follow Peter Obi and engage with him on social media do not live in Nigeria. In fact, majority of whom are bots 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 likely not to come to vote, what it means is that Peter Obi is basking in the euphoria of hallucination, and this polling is a true reflection. I won’t even go deeper to talk about the posters that they are surrogates of Peter Obi.”
‘IT IS THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE’
Meanwhile, Abayomi Arabambi, LP spokesperson, said the poll shows Nigerians are ready for a new order in governance.
“The opinion poll didn’t come to us as a surprise, because that exemplifies implicitly the yearning of Nigerians towards the presidential bid of Mr Peter Obi/Datti Ahmed,” he said.
“It shows that Nigerians have come to terms with our reality that there has to be a change and a new order from the old, because it is very obvious they are languishing in abject poverty. There are no jobs for Nigerians. Schools are under lock and key due to executive rascality and malfeasance of the present administration.
“You are aware that there are certain regions where we scored low, but we are not going to complain about it. But it shows that those people complaining about that are already seeing the results of what is going to happen come February next year when we go to the polls.”