APC, PDP, NNPP protest as poll places Peter Obi first in presidential race

A poll, commissioned by ANAP Foundation and conducted by NOI Polls Limited, has placed Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) as winner of the 2023 presidential race with 21 percent of the votes.

According to a statement by ANAP on Thursday, Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar, candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), respectively, are tied in second place with 13 percent of votes.

Described as a “dark horse”, Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) came fourth “with 3% of voters proposing to vote for him”.

‘FAKE, DUBIOUS STATISTICS’

Reacting to the development in a statement, Bayo Onanuga, spokesperson of APC presidential campaign council, described the result as “dubious and unreliable statistics”.

Onanuga made reference to a previous poll conducted by the same organisation prior to 2015 presidential election, which had placed Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP at the time as first in the race.

“Our objective profiling of NOI Polls as an anti-APC research organisation is grounded on the aforesaid facts and that is why we believe this present report is, in the language of Nigerians, ‘*wuruwuru to the answer’,” he said.

“The NOI has chosen the preferred candidate and has decided to use fake, dubious statistics to package him to the Nigerian voters.

“We know, as a matter of fact, the owners of NOI and where their political interest lies and wish to advise NOI to stop polluting the political system with irresponsible, unscientific and biased polling so that we don’t expose the puppeteers pulling its strings.”

He added that Tinubu will win the election.

‘BOGUS, CONCOCTED DATA’

On his part, Ladipo Johnson, spokesperson of the NNPP presidential campaign council, queried “the sampling method used in arriving at the obviously unverifiable or concocted data”.

“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,” he said.

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

“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.”