With about 13 days to the Presidential election and all candidates and parties rounding up their preparations. The former Governor of Anambra State and Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, (LP), Mr. Peter Obi, is enjoying the rave of the moment and this is the best of times for him.
Several opinion polls had credited him with victory in the February 25, 2023 election.
According to a new poll conducted for Bloomberg, the New York based global television and media giant, Peter Obi is the top pick for Nigerian President.
In the results of the survey conducted for Bloomberg News by Premise Data Corp, a San Francisco based Data Company which was published last Friday, about two weeks to the election, it showed that Two-thirds of respondents said they intend to vote for Obi, in elections scheduled for February 25, 2023.
Premise Data Corp has conducted six polls for Bloomberg, and in all Obi has maintained an unassailable lead.
In the latest poll, of the 93% of participants who said they’ve decided how to vote, 66% named Obi as their preferred choice. Obi scored a slightly higher 72% among decided respondents in an earlier Premise poll that was released by Bloomberg in September as the official election campaign kicked off
It could be recalled that another national survey conducted by Stears has predicted the election of Obi as the next President of Nigeria in the event of the massive turnout.
According to a statement released last Tuesday, by Stears, an Africa-focused data-driven company founded at the London School of Economics, the company said the “Stears electoral poll and prediction model indicates that Peter Obi is Nigeria’s most popular presidential candidate and should win the presidential ticket as long as Nigerians follow through on their stated intent to vote”.
According to the poll, Obi has a good chance of winning the 2023 Nigerian presidential election if voter turnout is high.
The poll shows that Peter Obi could win the election with as many as 41 per cent of the votes cast, ahead of the All Progresses Congress (APC) Candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu who is at 31%, and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), at 20%.
It however, tilts toward the presidential candidate of the APC, Tinubu if the election has a low voter turnout..
“Peter Obi holds a comfortable lead,” the statement read. “In essence, the Stears electoral poll and prediction model affirms that Peter Obi is by far the most popular and desired candidate for the 2023 Presidential Elections.”
“Having said that, to get a more realistic prediction of the outcome of the race, we can apply the same high and low turnout scenarios to our model predictions. When we do so, Peter Obi once again emerges triumphant in the high turnout scenario,” the company volunteered.
Like the Nextier Poll, which predicted a run-off election, the Stears poll also forecasts the possibility of a run-off should all ‘certain voters’ stick to their preferred candidate.
According to Stears, the most likely scenario would be a run-off between Obi and Tinubu.
The other two ‘big parties’, the APC and the PDP have however reacted sharply to the opinion polls dismissing the placing of Obi in the top echelon.
Speaking on the issue, the Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El- Rufai in an interview with a national Television in Lagos said Obi, the candidate of the Labour Party (LP), does not have the necessary support across all states to win the presidential election.
El-Rufai, who described the LP candidate as a “Nollywood actor”, said Obi can only expect significant votes from the south-east and south-south, but not from the north and south-west.
“We are ahead. How can Peter Obi win any election? Peter Obi is polling at one percent in Sokoto; two percent in Katsina; five percent in Kano. That’s where the votes are. All states are not equal,” he said.
“The fact that you’re doing 70 percent in Anambra state does not mean somebody doing 10 percent in Kano is not better than you. Kano is four million votes that actually happen. The number of votes in Anambra is the size of one local government area in Kaduna state. So, all states are not equal.
“If you poll states and you make them equal, yes, Peter Obi will sweep the south-eastern states; he will do well in south-south; where else? He’s not polling well in the south-west other than a drop in the ocean in Lagos. He’s polling in the Christian enclaves in the north — he’s polling well — but how many are they?
“Peter Obi cannot win the election. He doesn’t have the number of states; he doesn’t have 25 per cent.
Also speaking, a PDP Chieftain, Fabiyi Oladimeji dismissed different polls giving Peter Obi the lead in next year’s presidential election.
He maintained that such exercise has little impact on the outcome of elections.
“We are not making any assumptions. This is what we are saying: polls are not real determinants of elections. It is how many people you are able to convince and reach out to at the grassroots, not polls”.
Fabiyi who was speaking hours after a poll commissioned by the Anap Foundation gave the Labour Party presidential candidate the leverage in next year’s exercise.
Though he said such polls don’t affect election outcomes, he believes they have their roles.
“It will only tell you where to work and focus more. There are credible polls and there are polls that are not credible,” he added.
“We know those credible ones when we see them and when we see them, they spur us more to go to work and do the needful. So, we appreciate them when they come. That’s what polls help you to do, they do not tell you the outcome of the elections”, he said.
He also questioned the sample size used in the poll and argued that the number of people sampled is inadequate.
In the poll, which came four months after a similar one by the Foundation gave Obi the lead, the former Anambra State governor is ahead of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP)’s Rabiu Kwankwaso.
Obi has 23 per cent, Tinubu scored 13, Atiku got 10 and Kwankwaso polled two per cent in the fresh poll released in December 2022 according to the Anap Foundation President Atedo Peterside.
In his reaction , the Chief Spokesperson of the Obi/ Datti Campaign Council, Dr Yunusa Tanko, said that they welcomed the result of the poll, which only affirms the outcome of all recent pre-election polls beginning from that published in September 2022 showing Peter Obi with “a solid lead”.
“All the polls can’t be wrong,” Dr Yunusa declared.
He said when the ANAP Foundation published its poll results in December 2022 and declared a “solid lead” for Peter Obi, the organisation’s founder was viciously attacked by the APC propaganda machinery.
“They did the same to the founder of one of Nigeria’s most-respected policy consulting firms, Nextier, when the organisation released a credible poll showing that our candidate, Mr. Peter He He said Obi is one of the most inspirational leaders on the continent and that he has made inroads into Northern Nigeria and expanded his lead nationwide.
“Today, Stears Data, considered the most-trusted source of African data and insights and sometimes referred to as “Africa’s Bloomberg,” released its latest poll and called the elections for the Labour Party.
“One wonders what the APC spokesperson would say about this poll. Let’s not forget that ‘Bloomberg’ itself, the world’s most-trusted data company, called the polls for Peter Obi back in September 2022.
“These independent and reputable organisations can’t all be wrong. Nigerians are tired of the lies and Nigeria’s failed status,” the former National Chairman of the National Conscience Party said.
“This is some of those conversations that have taken place over the period and while we continue to mobilize people around the polling units. We also have interviews that we granted all over the nation that have been getting positive results. And this must have resulted in the polls being published but that will not deter us, we will keep working on the field so that we can do more and we can win this election in a clean sweep”, Tanko said.
About the Author
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.
