With less than a week to go before the Nigerian presidential election, pollsters and other election research groups are coming up with predictions on the outcome of the presidential election. One of the most reputable international pollsters, Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk firm, predicts a Muhammadu Buhari victory. It says that the president has a 60 per cent chance of being re-elected.
There are other predictions by other election pollsters that are also predicting a Buhari victory. While these predictions are not pure science, public opinion polling is an accurate social science with strict rules about sample size, random selection of participants and margins of error. It employs mathematical methods and computer analysis to collect responses from the best representative sample of the electorate. And random responses are adjusted and sifted to identify subtle trends in voter opinion that can help predict the eventual winner on the election.
Another recent poll by the highly regarded political pollsters, Lucid Pulses, corroborated earlier predictions of the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari. One thousand Nigerians across the country were randomly surveyed and analyzed for the February 23 presidential election. The survey shows the President winning a solid majority of 64 per cent of the votes, mostly from the North-West, North-East and South-West geo-political zones. On the other hand, 36 per cent of the respondents, mostly from the South-South, South-East and North-Central geo-political zones, said they would vote for the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar. The margin of error is -2 to +2.
Although there are about 70 political parties contesting in the upcoming Nigerian presidential election, the election is essentially a two-horse race between the presidential candidates of the two major political parties: President Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The two candidates are from northern Nigeria and of Fulani stock. Both are septuagenarians that have, for long, been active participants in Nigerian politics, making it possible for Nigerians to have clearly defined opinions of them.
It is understandable that Buhari will win the election. It was his image of an incorruptible, principled, and no-nonsense leader that gave him victory over the then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. Buhari’s strong will and incorruptibility represented refreshing contrasts to Jonathan’s spineless and sleazy presidency, which accentuated the moral and ethical regression of the Nigerian society.
Impressively, Buhari’s integrity has survived his four-year presidency: Nigerians believe that he remains incorruptibly upright. The President’s electoral promises centred on three areas, anti-corruption, security and the economy. Even his detractors admit that he has made significant strides in these three areas.
On the other hand, Nigerians consider Atiku corrupt, unprincipled and opportunistic. In his earlier eight years as the Nigerian Vice President, he cut the image of a grasping and irredeemably corrupt public official. It was an image that was further reinforced by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo’s denunciation of him as incorrigibly greedy and financially dishonest, and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigations that linked his business dealings with William Jefferson, a former US congressman, later prosecuted and jailed for felonies involving bribery in Nigeria.
Secondly, Atiku broke the Nigerian record in political prostitution. He must have changed political parties more than any other Nigerian politician ever. His repeated hopping from one political party to another portrayed him to the Nigerian electorate as an unprincipled politician, just driven by avarice and opportunism.
President Buhari’s indisputable integrity is an invaluable asset in the upcoming election. And Atiku’s acclaimed corruption avarice are a burden on his campaign because Nigerians are not convinced by his attempt to recast himself as a reformer that will, if elected, reform the system, institute respect for the rule of law, revamp the economy and fight corruption.
President Buhari’s core electoral support base is mostly in the North-West, North-East and South-West. It is important to note that these are the three most populous zones in the country.
Although Atiku is from the North, he is neither very popular in the North-East nor the North-West. His strength is in his strong political network across the country. Though a Fulani Muslim, he has friends and business and family connections across the three main parts of the country.
His first wife, Titi, is Yoruba, Jennifer is Igbo and Fatima is Fulani. The Atiku campaign has its strong support in the South-East, South-South and the Christian Middle Belt. He is projected to win outrightly in the South-East and South-South geo-political zones and, marginally, in the North-Central geo-political zone. These are the least-populated parts of the country.
With his expected victory in the three most populous geo-political zones in the country as against Atiku’s projected victory in the less-populated geo-political zones, the re-election of President Buhari is almost for certain.
sources: Agencies report
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