By Kamsi Anayo
Bloomberg has given the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, a lead over the ruling All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 elections.
Bloomberg, the global television group based in New York said in the opinion poll that a clear majority of those who participated in the polls said they would vote Peter Obi.
Bloomberg stated that out of 92 percent of the participants, who have taken the decision on how to vote, 72% opted for Obi as their preferred candidate.
It was further stated that out of those who are yet to take a decision on how to vote, 45 percent preferred Obi ad their candidate.
The candidates of the two parties that have ruled Nigeria since the restoration of democracy in 1999 were beaten by the LP Candidate at the poll.
According to the poll, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress got 16% of decided voters and 23% of those yet to make up their minds while Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party polled l 9% and 17% respectively.
The results of the survey which conducted for Bloomberg News by Premise Data Corp was released on Wednesday the scheduled date for the commencement of campaigns for the 2023 General elections.
The San Francisco-based data company surveyed 3,973 Nigerians from Sept. 5-20. Respondents to the app-based poll were selected from quotas developed by age, gender and location across the country’s six geopolitical zones. Results were then weighted against the original quotas to ensure national representation. About 44% of Nigerians own smartphones, according to the Alliance for Affordable Internet.
A former two-term governor of the southeastern Anambra state, Obi is running on the ticket of the Labour Party, which won a single seat in the Senate and House of Representatives in the last election in 2019. The APC and PDP dominate both chambers of parliament.
In a relatively short time, Obi has built up an enthusiastic base known as “Obidients” — initially online, but increasingly in the streets — who aim to cause an upset on Feb. 25. Still, the Labour Party has a much smaller nationwide presence than the two rival parties, which are experienced at turning out voters across the vast West African country. Obi’s supporters will need to rapidly scale up their organizational infrastructure if they’re to capitalize on the campaign’s momentum.
Obi originally sought the PDP’s nomination before withdrawing from a party election that Abubakar, a former vice president and perennial presidential candidate, won in May. Tinubu, who used to govern the commercial hub of Lagos and is the most influential politician in southwestern Nigeria, triumphed by a landslide in the APC’s primaries the following month.
The five-month race to the general elections gets underway as Nigerians contend with soaring inflation, a plunging currency and pervasive insecurity. Production of the economy’s historical mainstay — crude oil — has also slumped to multi-decade lows, while the Buhari administration’s debt service bill in the first quarter of the year exceeded the revenue it was able to earn.
Three-quarters of respondents said that their country is heading in the “wrong direction.” A combined 88% listed the economy and jobs, corruption, and security — three pillars of the campaign that brought Buhari to power in 2015 — as the most important issues facing their communities.
