The All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council and the Atiku Campaign Organisation of the Peoples Democratic Party, have rejected a poll on 2023 presidential election conducted by the Ngozi Okonjo Iweala Polls(NOI).
The polls , released on Thursday, was commissioned by the Atedo Peterside Foundation.
The polls puts Peter Obi of the Labour Party at the top with 21% ahead of Tinubu and Atiku, who came joint second with 13% each while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party, NNPP, came a distant third with 3% .
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But the result of the polls which confined Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the APC to second place was rejected by his presidential campaign council, describing it as “wuruwuru” polls (dubious).
A statement by its Director of Media and Publicity, Bayo Onanuga said, “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.”
The APCPCC cited the March 2015 presidential elections, NOI had published in October 2014, where it said the results of a “Viability Poll”, using the concepts of Familiarity and Net Favourability Position to survey, to say then incumbent President, Goodluck Jonathan scored highest, meaning he was most likely going to win.
Jonathan lost the election to Muhammadu Buhari of the APC, which was formed few years to the election by a coalition.
The statement explained that, “In the results, NOI claimed that President Goodluck Jonathan has the best overall familiarity rating at 99% and Net Favourability Probability of ±25.
“By contrast, NOI dismissed the then All Progressives Congress candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, as a ‘borderline candidate’ who needed ‘huge public relations’ to shore up his performance.
“But when the Nigerian people went to the polls, who won? The APC candidate and now President, Muhammadu Buhari,” APCPCC declared.
It also noted that, “This is not the only instance when the NOI has turned its political bias in an election period to fraudulent statistics.”
It recalled that towards the 2019 presidential elections, and knowing that President Buhari was going for re-election for a second term in office, “the NOI pollsters embarked on another abracadabra.
“In June 2017, they issued the results of another poll, that Nigerians prefer a middle-aged president claiming that this poll was inspired by the election of Macron as the president of France and the campaign of the Not Too Young To Run.
“According to the predictable bias, NOI claimed that 64% said they would prefer to vote for a presidential candidate between the ages of 40 and 50 years and 15% preferred candidates between 51 and 60.
“In short, for a presidential candidate in his 70s running for re-election, NOI results meant certain defeat. But when the Nigerian people went to the polls on February 23, 2019, the man the NOI polls had tried to bully with statistics out of the race won again.
“It is significant that at the time NOI was generating unrealistic figures to boost the ego of President Jonathan, a more serious and independent team of pollsters- Neo-Telligence based in the United Kingdom used geo-demographics and public sentiment analysis to forecast the emergence of President Buhari.
“By contrast, their empirical analysis showed that two years before the 2015 presidential elections, Goodluck Jonathan’s public approval rating on corruption, insecurity and the economy had nosedived across most of the battleground states”, it added.
“The council added that its objective profiling of NOI Polls as an anti-APC research organization 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,” the APCPCC said.
Accusing NOI of bias, the statement noted that NOI has chosen its 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”, the council added.
On its part, the Atiku Campaign Organisation, ACO, said in a short reaction sent to THE WHISTLER that the polls were conjured by Obi.
Speaking for ACO, Daniel Bwala said, “Funny, ‘polls are assessed by sample size and margin of errors.
“The Peter Obi surrogate polling company conjures something to inflate his ego and confuse voters into thinking cyber space translates to physical space. 419 pollsters,” he declared.