Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has dismissed predictions of Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, winning the upcoming presidential election in Nigeria.
In an interview with TVC News, Governor El-Rufai criticized the accuracy of polls conducted by ANAP Foundation and others, claiming that they could not be relied upon.
According to ANAP’s polls conducted in December 2022, 23% of voters were willing to vote for Peter Obi in the presidential election, with 13% proposing to vote for Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and 10% for Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) came in fourth with 2% of voters proposing to vote for him.
However, Governor El-Rufai argued that the poll conducted by ANAP was not done accurately, stating, “The most important thing in looking at any opinion poll is the sample followed by the methodology. When you have hundreds of millions of registered voters and you are sampling three thousand registered voters your results are unreliable, will have a high margin of errors and most of these polls (predicting Peter Obi as the winner of the election) are like that.”
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The governor also took issue with the methodology of other polls, saying, “All the opinion polls conducted, the Bloomberg one, the ANAP one and the Ngozi Iweala one all use the telephone. Only 31 per cent of voters registered contain phone numbers. When you pick your sample out of the 31 per cent, from day one, your result is dead on arrival.”
According to Governor El-Rufai, the election is going to be a close contest between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), with a large percentage of undecided voters.
He said, “We have done a poll with a sample of nearly 40,000 across Nigeria and the results of the polls show that we are ahead, and it’s going to be a tight election, there is a large percentage of undecided voters, we must work hard to swing the undecided to our side but we are ahead.”
Regarding Peter Obi’s chances of winning, Governor El-Rufai stated, “How can Peter Obi win any election, he is polling one per cent in Sokoto, two per cent in Katsina, and five per cent in Kano, that is where the votes are, all states are not equal. The fact that he is doing 70 per cent in Anambra State does not mean somebody doing 10 per cent in Kano is not better than him. Peter Obi will win southeastern states, South-south, where else? He is not polling well in the South-west other than a drop in the ocean in Lagos. He is polling in the Christian enclaves in the north, but how many are they? Peter Obi cannot win the election, he doesn’t have the number of states, and he doesn’t have 25 per cent in more than 16 states, he can’t go anywhere. Peter Obi is a Nollywood actor and that is all he will speak about. This election is between the APC and the PDP because they have the footprints and the ‘spate’. Ethnicity and religious bigotry will not take you anywhere and that is what the Labour Party campaign is about.”
