Politics
2023: Keyamo Discredits Anap Poll That Favours Peter Obi Over Others
Keyamo says the Anap poll projecting Obi as the leading presidential candidate in the 2023 election is “deliberately skewed.”
Eko Hot Blog reports that the spokesperson of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign council, Festus Keyamo, has rejected a pre-election opinion poll showing Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) as the leading presidential candidate for the 2023 general election.
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This news medium gathered that the poll was commissioned by Anap Foundation, a non-profit organisation.
The poll result, which was conducted in December and released on Wednesday, showed that 23 percent of respondents expressed their interest to vote for the LP candidate if the election was held at the time, while Bola Tinubu of the APC got 13 percent.
Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) received 10 percent support, while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) was a distant fourth with two percent.
Anap, however, added a caveat that the poll is inconclusive because of the combination of undecided voters and voters who refused to disclose their preferences, is enough to change the poll outcome.
Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi
In a statement on Thursday, Keyamo stated that the poll left many unanswered questions regarding the format for conducting the poll.
The APC campaign spokesperson went further to question the organisation’s methods.
He also dismissed the poll’s validity because it was not done person-to-person.
“There is no need to join issues with or analyse this fallacious polls any further once you see the methodology by which the poll 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,” the statement reads.
“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.
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“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.”
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