Keyamo faults Anap polls projecting Obi’s victory

Spokesman of the Presidential Campaign Council of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Festus Keyamo has faulted the results of the polls conducted by a non-profit Organisation, Anap Foundation which projected the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi to win.

In the result released on Wednesday, Anap said the poll which was conducted in December, showed that Obi was leading, with 23 per cent of the respondents choosing him as their candidate ahead of APC’s Bola Tinubu with 13 percent.

Peoples Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar had 10 per cent of the respondents choosing him while New Nigeria Peoples Party’s Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has two per cent.

Anap declared the polls inconclusive because the combination of undecided voters and voters who refused to disclose their preferences was more than the gap between the top two.

Reacting in a statement on Thursday, Keyamo alleged that the outcome was “deliberately skewed”.

The statement reads: “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.

“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.

“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.”