The All Progressives Congress APC Presidential Campaign Council has described the NOI poll as dubious and unreliable, noting that the flag bearer of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is more concerned with pertinent issues.
The Council in a statement by its Director, Media and Publicity, Mr Bayo Onanuga established that right from history, the NOI polls have been known to be deceptive and an untrue indicator of whom Nigerians will vote into power during the election.
It stated that it is, therefore, unperturbed by it, expressing confidence that Tinubu will record the highest votes across the country to emerge president in 2023 just as he did when he ran as a senator under the Social Democratic Party in 1992.
“Our party is putting every necessary machinery in motion to win the federal elections with a margin that will be too wide to contest.
“Our candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu recorded the highest votes of a senator across the country under the Social Democratic Party in July 1992. He will do it on nationwide scale on February 25, 2023”, the council said.
The results of a polls conducted by NOI Polls had placed Labour Party LP presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi ahead of APC’s Tinubu.
The poll results showed a significant lead for Mr 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 APC’s Tinubu and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP who were both tied in second place.
Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party NNPP was a distant fourth with 3% of voters proposing to vote for him, according to a statement by ANAP Foundation which announced the results of the poll.
“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,” it stated.
It recalled the build-up to the March 2015 presidential elections when NOI published in October 2014 the results of a “Viability Poll” which used the concepts of Familiarity and Net Favourability Position to survey.
“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.
This is not the only instance when the NOI has turned its political bias in an election period to fraudulent statistics”, the council said.
The council recounted “another abracadabra” the NOI pollsters embarked on towards the 2019 presidential elections while in the know that President Buhari was going for re-election for a second term in office.
“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 the 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.
“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,” it added.
The council said that the NOI had picked their favourite candidate and will choose to use “fake, dubious statistics to package him to the Nigerian voters”.
It, however, warned them against the polluting the political system “with irresponsible, unscientific and biased polling so that we don’t expose the puppeteers pulling its strings.”