he All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the African Action Congress (AAC) and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) have drawn their daggers over the recent poll which favoured Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) to win the 2023 presidential election.

The survey conducted by the ANAP Foundation placed Obi ahead with 21 per cent while Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar, came joint second with 13 per cent each and Rabiu Kwankwaso a distant third with three per cent.

Reacting, the Atiku Campaign Organisation (ACO) claimed the polls were conjured by Obi while Tinubu’s camp dismissed it as dubious.

The candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, alleged that the involvement of founding father of ANAP Basis, Atedo Peterside, rendered it biased.

In his facebook page, Sowore said: “@AtedoPeterside shouldn’t be conducting opinion polls. He lacks the credibility to conduct any polls.

“He’s @PeterObi’s campaign mgr. That is like Lagos NURTW/@Mcoluomo9 conducting a ballot that states that @officialABAT would win the 2023 presidential election. Cease rigging polls!”

Speaking for ACO, Daniel Bwala said: “Funny, polls are assessed by sample size and margin of errors. The Peter Obi surrogate polling company conjures something to inflate his ego and confuse voters into thinking cyber space translates to physical space. 419 pollsters.”

On its part, the APC Presidential Campaign Council, in a statement by its Director of Media and Publicity, Bayo Onanuga, said the poll was dubious, made up of unreliable statistics, wild and incredible permutations. He asserted that APC and its presidential flag bearer were not bothered.

The statement read: “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.

“For example, preparatory to the March 2015 presidential elections, NOI published in October 2014 the results of a ‘Viability Poll’ which used the concepts of familiarity and net favourability position to survey. In the results, NOI claimed that President Goodluck Jonathan has the best overall familiarity rating at 99 per cent and net favourability probability of ±25.

“By contrast, NOI dismissed the then APC candidate, Muhammadu Buhari as a “borderline candidate” who needed “huge public relations” to shore up his performance.

“But when the Nigerian people went to the polls, who won? The APC candidate and now President, Muhammadu Buhari. This is not the only instance when the NOI has turned its political bias in an election period to fraudulent statistics.

“Towards the 2019 presidential elections, and knowing fully that President Buhari was going for re-election for a second term in office, the NOI pollsters embarked on another abracadabra. In June 2017, they issued the results of another poll, that Nigerians prefer a middle-aged president claiming that this poll was inspired by the election of Macron as the president of France and the campaign of the Not Too Young To Run.”

“According to the predictable bias, NOI claimed that 64 per cent said they would prefer to vote for a presidential candidate between the ages of 40 and 50 years and 15 per cent preferred candidates between 51 and 60.

“In short, for a presidential candidate in his 70s running for re-election, NOI results meant certain defeat. But when the Nigerian people went to the polls on February 23, 2019, the man the NOI polls had tried to bully with statistics out of the race won again.

“It is significant that at the time NOI was generating unrealistic figures to boost the ego of President Jonathan, a more serious and independent team of pollsters – Neo-Telligence based in the United Kingdom used geo-demographics and public sentiment analysis to forecast the emergence of President Buhari.

“By contrast, their empirical analysis showed that two years before the 2015 presidential elections, Goodluck Jonathan’s public approval rating on corruption, insecurity and the economy had nosedived across most of the battleground states.”

Onanuga described NOI Polls as an anti-APC research organisation, stressing that it had chosen Obi as its preferred candidate and has decided to use fake, dubious statistics to package him to the Nigerian voters.

“Our party is putting every necessary machinery in motion to win the federal elections with a margin that will be too wide to contest. Our candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu recorded the highest votes of a senator across the country under the Social Democratic Party in July 1992. He will do it on a nationwide scale on February 25, 2023.”

The Campaign Council of NNPP said the projections in the poll were self-seeking, self-serving, misleading, inaccurate and laced with partisanship.

Its spokesperson, Mr. Ladipo Johnson, impunged the sampling methods of the data collection and described the projection as bogus and misleading.

“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.

“Unfortunately there are many who for parochial reasons are drawing back the development of our democracy, due to various propaganda tricks.”

According to him, the data purportedly relied upon did not go far enough in an empirical manner to show the ethnic and religious backgrounds of those polled.

He added that there was no indication as to whether those polled were artisans, educated or non educated , professional or non professional Nigerians among others.

“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. This is similar to a misleading poll they conducted before the Ekiti election,” he said.

According to him, in any event, the poll will succeed in giving their supporters temporary euphoria.

Notwithstanding, the harsh reactions, national chairman of LP, Julius Abure and publicity secretary, Arabambi Abayomi applauded the poll.

According to Abayomi, if a poll conducted by an independent body declared that Nigerians wanted a change through Obi, it is a good omen, and it signifies an end to an inglorious era of both APC and PDP who have held Nigeria to ransom for the past 24 to 25 years.

In his reaction, Abure said: “PDP and APC’s time is up. Nigerians have made up their mind to do away with them. The mood of the people is very clear and the reason for this are not far-fetched, the government of PDP and APC have been impoverishing the people. People are hungry with poverty in the land. As we speak, inflation rate is 19.5 percent out. No fewer than 100 million are living below the poverty line. So, what kind of country is this when you cannot travel from Abuja to Benin or from Abuja to Kaduna.

“The insecurity in the country is ravaging every person in the country, the rural dwellers who used to live on substituent farming can no longer go to farm and fishermen can no longer fish in the water. But it’s good for them to continue to deny it and undermine us.

“I agree entirely with the report because it captures the mood of the people. Let them continue to deceive themselves. If they are saying it is not correct let us wait and see what happens in 2023.”

Meanwhile, the Action Alliance (AA) has dissociated itself from the allegation made against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the APC by the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) that the electoral umpire has perfected plans to rig the 2023 general election in favour of the APC.

The CUPP had at a press conference raised the alarm that INEC and APC are making moves to rig the election.

At the press conference, one Kenneth Udeze represented the AA.

But in its reaction, the party described Udeze as a frustrated politician who is seeking for relevance, having being expelled from the party. (Daily Sun)

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