A poll conducted by the NOI Polls Limited, which gave an edge to the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi over that of the All Progressive Congress, Bola Tinubu and the Peoples Democratic Party Atiku Abubakar, is causing ripples as the All Progressive Congress has faulted the poll outcome.
NOI had announced the result of its poll where Obi garnered 21 per cent of votes 13 per cent each proposed to vote for the flag bearer of APC and the PDP.
A total of 32 per cent of responders were undecided on their preferred candidate.
In a statement issued today and signed by the Director of Media and Publicity of the APC campaign council, Bayo Onanuga, the ruling party described the NOI polls as dubious.
“The attention of the APC Presidential Campaign Council has been drawn to a poll conducted by the NOI polls, which made wild and incredible permutations on the presidential elections.
“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,” parts of the statement read.
The Council alleged that NOI Polls adopted fake statistics to sell the preferred candidate to the electorate.
It then advised the NOI to stop “polluting the political system with irresponsible, unscientific and biased polling so that we don’t expose the puppeteers pulling its strings.”
The Council further stated that all necessary machinery was in motion for Tinubu to win the 2023 elections.
It asserted the party’s candidate, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, would win on the nationwide scale, with a margin that would be too wide to contest.
In a statement issued early Thursday and signed by the President & Founder of Anap Foundation, Mr. Atedo Peterside, he said the polls were conducted in all the six geo-political zones.
Peterside said the opinion polls were commissioned by Anap Foundation and conducted by NOI Polls Limited.
He said the polls showed a substantially close race between Obi, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
He added that it pointed out that September 2022 polls were inconclusive in terms of establishing a clear winner, as the undecided voters are large enough to turn the tables.
It, however, said Anap Foundation has concluded that the trends are clear enough to establish the front runners, saying subsequent polls would concentrate on the four leading candidates only.
The statement reads: “All other contestants polled results that are statistically insignificant. The results showed a significant lead for Mr. Peter Obi with 21% of voters proposing to vote for him if the presidential election were to be conducted today and 13% each proposing to vote for Asiwayu Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar who are both tied in second place. Dr. Rabiu Kwankwaso was a distant fourth with 3% of voters proposing to vote for him.
“Mr. Peter Obi’s 8 percentage point lead at this early stage is significant but not sufficient to separate him completely from a leading pack of candidates scoring 21%, 13% and 13% respectively.
“Running significantly behind the leading pack is Dr. Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) who is the lone outsider i.e. a “dark horse” in the race.”
The polls revealed that undecided voters and those who preferred not to reveal their preferred candidate add up to a whopping 32% and 15% respectively; while the gender split of undecided voters showed that 39% of women are undecided versus 27% of male voters.