Political Issues
All Pollsters That Rated Obi As Most Preferred Candidate Cannot Be Wrong At The Same Time -By Isaac Asabor
To internationalize the context of this piece, it is expedient to make reference to the US Polls in 2020 where not a few Pollsters in their findings came up with the results that Biden would win the election, irrespective of the fact that his opponents doubted the findings and dismissed them to be faked, Biden eventually won the election.
In the month of April 2022, Peter Obi, the presidential aspirant on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), was tipped in an independent poll as the most preferred candidate in the upcoming 2023 presidential election among 14 others.
The poll, which was jointly conducted by NexTier, a multi-competency advisory firm, and Data-Tier, a data analytics and digital communications firm, said the study population consisted of voting-age Nigerians in the country and in the Diaspora, while respondents were chosen randomly from each of the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria.
It will be recalled in this context that NexTier and DataTier said the aim of the poll was to “Guage Nigerians’ preferences for a presidential candidate; to understand the challenges Nigerians would like the next government address promptly, and to decipher to what extent ethnic engendered biases would inform the next election.”
Thus, the result revealed that almost half of the respondents (46.04 percent) selected Peter Obi as their most preferred candidate for president in 2023.
In a similar vein, Bloomberg’s opinion poll conducted in September last year has it that Obi, whom it referred to as being a third-party candidate, was the top choice to become the next president of Nigeria.
It stated that “A clear majority of respondents said they intend to vote for Peter Obi, a former state governor, in elections scheduled for February 2023. The results of the survey conducted for Bloomberg News by Premise Data Corp. were published on Wednesday as the official campaign to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari kicked off.” Not only that, it said of the 92% of participants who said they’ve decided how to vote, 72% named Obi as their first choice. Of those who are still unsure, 45% said the 61-year-old is their preferred candidate.”
Ostensibly to double-check its poll that was conducted in September 2022 on the chances of presidential aspirants in the forthcoming election in February 2023, NOI Polls Limited in conjunction with ANAP Foundation in December released the findings of its second poll which again shows that Obi is ahead of the three other frontline candidates.
A recently conducted survey carried out by Market Trends International (MTI) on all presidential candidates in the 2023 election has placed Obi, ahead of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Bola Tinubu of All Progressives Congress (APC), and Rabiu Kwankwaso of New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), among others.
Ostensibly out of fear or pride, Obi’s opponents have for the umpteenth time dismissed the surveys predicting Obi to be victorious. They have in their condemnations mischievously and bigotedly labeled the surveys to be fake and “paid for,” and urged Nigerians to disregard the findings.
It is sad to say that the same politicians and their supporters that are in the ongoing political dispensation condemning polls that favor Obi were alive when the presidential election opinion polls conducted for ANAP foundation in 2015 and 2019 clearly said the then candidate of the APC, Muhammadu Buhari had a better chance of winning the last two presidential elections.
Paradoxically, the two polls that are in favor of Obi; that is in September and December, and which have been raising dust were conducted by the same ANAP Foundation and NOI polls that are now being discredited by politicians and their followers that are opposed to Obi’s presidential aspiration.
In the same vein, Bloomberg which also rated Obi to be ahead of other presidential aspirants ahead of the forthcoming elections had in the past been rated to be unbiased and reliable in its analysis cum fact reporting.
To internationalize the context of this piece, it is expedient to make reference to the US Polls in 2020 where not a few Pollsters in their findings came up with the results that Biden would win the election, irrespective of the fact that his opponents doubted the findings and dismissed them to be faked, Biden eventually won the election.
Personally speaking, it is difficult to ponder over the level of partisan politics being played against Obi by his traducers given the fact that most of them are either university or polytechnic graduates who ought to know that when knowledge is consistent with research findings that were variously conducted by pollsters that there is a strong reason for people to be more confident that it is accurate. Against the foregoing backdrop, why have unarguably educated and well-informed Nigerians always doubted the veracity of the polls that say Obi is ahead of other presidential aspirants?
Even from a casual perspective, the crowd that Obi has been pulling wherever he goes for a campaign; the endorsement galore he has been gaining, and the favorable mention of his candidacy by not a few Nigerians; online and offline, should be enough for his traducers to eschew disputing findings that are favorable to his presidential candidacy by reputable and credible Pollsters. Rather, they should work harder instead of playing the ostrich.
Against the foregoing backdrop, it is expedient to say that all pollsters who variously rated Obi as the most preferred presidential candidate cannot be simultaneously wrong
