February 06, (THEWILL) – The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (APC-PCC) has rejected the election poll result conducted by Nextier, a public policy advisory firm.
THEWILL reports that while Nextier had predicted a second round of runoff election, the poll result, however, showed the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, polled a lead over Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC.
Obi secured the highest voter preference among leading presidential candidates, with 37 percent of the poll results, closely followed by the PDP (27 percent) and APC (24 percent).
However, the APC-PCC, in a statement issued on Sunday night, by its Director of Media and Publicity, Bayo Onanuga, alleged that promoters of Nextier are members of the Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council and active supporters of Peter Obi.
“Any poll conducted by such an intensely partisan and prejudicially tainted organisation should be taken with a pinch of salt,” Onanuga declared.
The statement read in part: “It is quite ludicrous that Nextier Poll that projects a clean sweep of the South East Region at over 90% of registered voters also puts Peter Obi, ahead of APC Presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in the six South West States including Lagos.
“Assuming without absolutely conceding that Peter Obi, will enjoy home advantage in his part of the country, we then wonder why the pollsters at Nextier, if they have any modicum of respect for the intellect of Nigerians, thought the factors that will propel landslide victory for Obi in Southeast will not work for the APC candidate in his own South West base.
“Nextier Pollsters also put Labour Party ahead of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party Candidate, in his home state of Adamawa. How ridiculous can Nextier Pollsters get?
“Nextier Pollsters called the entire South-South Region for Labour Party at 60% in Akwa-Ibom, the base of the Chairman of PDP Presidential Campaign Council.
“The partisan pollsters gave Bayelsa 62.9% to Labour Party and also claimed LP would win Delta 65.9 %, home of PDP Vice Presidential Candidate.
“The jesters in Nextier also claimed Obi would win Rivers by 77.8%, Edo 76.9% and Cross Rivers by 63.2%. It did not matter to them that in these states, Labour Party has no serving councillor in any ward.
“Nextier’s so-called face-to-face nationwide poll summarises that Peter Obi is the preferred candidate of 37% of Nigerians, with a conclusion that the Presidential election will go into a run-off.
“We make bold to say this is wishful thinking without any basis in fact and reality.
“It is important to alert Nigerians and the international community that the Pollsters at Nextier are working for the Labour Party and their poll results are all cooked up, far away from reality.
“We suspect that their first and second fallacious poll results are a pretext to cause political crisis and riots in Nigeria after the February 25.
“They may be preparing the ground for violent protest by Obi supporters, who will allege rigging when their candidate is roundly defeated at the election in which he is not likely to even come a distant 3rd.
“We want to state categorically that Peter Obi, is not a major contender in the coming presidential election in Nigeria and no fantasy and fairytale poll can change the material facts.
“We want to put it on record that Nextier Poll is useless for three reasons:
“First, the sample size of 3,000 is statistically too insignificant in an election with over 93 million registered voters and admits greater margins of error than claimed.
“Second, the distribution of the sample neither reflects voter demographics nor variations in voter turnout across states.
“Third, the main objective of Nextier Poll is to report a predetermined conclusion so that when Labour Party loses by a wide margin, its rabid supporters can embark on another violent protest, similar to the destructive #ENDSARS riots of 2020.”
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