Ahead of this month’s election, Mr. Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s Presidential candidate is favoured to grab the Nigeria’s topmost position, Bloomberg News predicts.
The pre-election poll conducted for Bloomberg News by Premise Data Corp said the former Anambra governor was the preferred candidate for the nation’s top job, beating the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In September 2022, an NOI poll also placed Obi as the leading candidate with 21 percent of the votes. Tinubu and Atiku tied in second place with 13 percent of votes each, while Kwankwaso came fourth with three percent.
“Two-thirds of respondents said they intend to vote for Obi, a third-party candidate, in elections scheduled for later this month. The results of the survey conducted for Bloomberg News by Premise Data Corp. were published on Friday – 15 days before the vote to choose President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor,” Bloomberg wrote.
“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.”
While giving details of the exercise, the organisation said 2,384 Nigerians were polled from Jan. 26 to Feb. 4 via a smartphone app.
“Submissions were selected from quotas developed by age, gender, and location across the country’s six geopolitical zones, the company said. Results were then weighted against the original quotas to ensure national representation,” it added.
In September, Bloomberg conducted a similar poll which also put Obi as the preferred presidential candidate.
“Of the 92% of participants who said they’ve decided how to vote, 72% named Obi as their first choice,” the outlet said. “Of those who are still unsure, 45% said the 61-year-old is their preferred candidate.”
It added that 3,973 Nigerians were surveyed from September 5 – 20.
Before the most recent poll, similar exercises predicted Obi as the leading contender for the 2023 election.
Anap Foundation poll in September said the LP flagbearer was leading the pack for the presidential election with 21 percent of the votes.
Atiku and Tinubu were tied in second place while the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP)’s Rabiu Kwankwaso followed them.
Months after that, the Anap Foundation conducted a fresh poll which again said Obi is leading the race.
But Obi’s opponents including the ruling APC, the PDP, and NNPP have dismissed the polls, maintaining that the LP candidate stands no chance in the election.
Obi, whose opponents have repeatedly waved him aside as a “social media candidate,” enjoys a huge following among youths who feel disenchanted about the country’s political system.
Kwankwaso rejects poll
Rabiu Kwankwaso, presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), says he enjoys being “underrated” ahead of the presidential election.
Speaking in a Channels Television interview on Friday, Kwankwaso rejected pre-election opinion polls predicting Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) as the winner of the election.
In many of the polls conducted by various organisations, Kwankwaso had always been rated in the fourth position.
Commenting on the development, the NNPP candidate said the polls were conducted via telephone, adding that 90 percent of his supporters are not on social media.
Kwankwaso alleged that the intention of the organisers of the polls is to cause crisis after the election and get financial donations for their preferred candidate.
“When we (LP and NNPP) were about to come together, I said that the only opportunity they (LP) had was for us to come together,” he said.
“We know what is happening. The first one (poll) that they released from his side — Peter Obi — they were giving me six percent in the north-west.
“Even a madman knows that I’m over and above six percent or even 60 percent. We had done it. We have seen the in-house figures of PDP and APC and they dare not bring them out.
“I always enjoy people who would want to underrate me. They had done that in 1999.
“As far as we are concerned in NNPP, we have locked northern Nigeria.
“Do you see any poll from northern Nigeria? All those polls were coming from the south and the media that is propagating that fake information is mainly from that part of the country.
“These things (polls) are on the telephone. Over 90 percent of my supporters don’t even know Twitter or social media. If you want to meet them, go to Wuse Market, go to the markets in Kano, go to the market in Sabo, Ibadan, go to markets in Rivers and the roads and so on, and ask people.”
