Report by Mudasir Opeyemi
The presidential campaign council of Tinubu-Shettima has faulted a fresh poll conducted by NOI Polls Limited which put the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi ahead of APC’s Bola Tinubu and two other frontline candidates.
Anap Foundation had on Wednesday released its second poll concluded in December which showed that participants and potential voters preferred Obi to Tinubu; Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP).
Atedo Peterside,the founder of the foundation in a statement signed said Obi has 23 percent, Tinubu scored 13, Atiku got 10 and Kwankwaso polled 2 percent in the fresh poll released in December.
He had also said mobile phones were the instruments used to conduct the poll because of increased mobile phone penetration in the country, adding that a large percentage of people are undecided.
Anap Foundation had released a similar poll in September in which Obi also led the other 17 candidates in the race for Aso Rock’s top job in 2023.
However,in his reaction to the new poll,Festus Keyamo in a statement titled “THE FALACY OF THE SO-CALLED ANAP FOUNDATION POLL” said the poll was “deliberately skewed” to encourage Obi’s supporters whose enthusiasms have waned in recent times.
Keyamo, who is the Chief Spokesperson for the Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, also faulted the medium through which the poll was conducted.
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“There is no need to join issues with or analyse this fallacious polls any further once you see the methodology by which the polls was conducted: according to Atedo Peterside, it was ONLY by phone that it was conducted because of the ‘insecurity’ across the country. They did not conduct a person-to-person enquiry,” Keyamo said
According to him, the recent poll according to Anap Foundation was embedded with many unanswered questions adding that anything short of a person-to-person polling, including harvesting enquiries from far flung rural areas and in local languages, is a complete exercise in futility.
He asked: “How did they ascertain the phone numbers of those who reside or are registered in a particular State? If it is from the INEC register (was it made available to them?) how did they ascertain those that have collected their PVCs and are eligible to vote, since collection of PVC just began?
“Assuming the INEC register was not made available to them, and they randomly sampled opinions by phone numbers and asked people to state their locations or where they are registered to vote, what gave them the assurance that respondents truthfully
stated their locations? It is a fact that many people in Nigeria have two to three phone numbers; if so, how sure are they that many respondents did not respond by different phone numbers that they may have?
“It is also true that millions of under 18-year-olds have access to phones in Nigeria and the world, how did they ascertain the ages of those responding to their supposed enquiries?
“Many unanswered questions. In all, in a complex country like Nigeria, anything short of a person-to-person polling, including harvesting enquiries from far flung rural areas and in local languages, is a complete exercise in futility.
“Finally, my considered opinion is that this poll is deliberately skewed to encourage the supporters of a particular candidate whose enthusiasms have waned in recent times in the face of the hard realities they have seen on the ground on the campaign trail,” Keyamo added