Worrying images of what may be ahead in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) primaries continued today in response to last Monday’s opinion poll in which President Goodluck Jonathan reportedly trailed former Vice President and presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.
Worrying images of what may be ahead in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) primaries continued today in response to last Monday’s opinion poll in which President Goodluck Jonathan reportedly trailed former Vice President and presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.
The poll, which was conducted on PDP website, also showed that Nigerians overwhelmingly prefer “Other parties” (70%) to the PDP (30%). A source said the PDP was prevailed upon to remove the poll and replace it
with a second one but that one also turned up similar results as it had Atiku ahead of Jonathan by 48.4% to 47%. The new poll was also quickly removed.
It was not clear why the second poll was also removed, but a PDP headquarters source said the leadership of the PDP may have felt threatened that its resources were being used to publish such a heavy indictment ahead of the crunch presidential primaries.
A 234next.com screenshot of the poll yanked yesterday from www.peoplesdemocraticparty.net .
Meanwhile, the Presidency is alleged to have ordered the PDP to fish out all suspected pro-Atiku staff in the secretariat of the ruling party. The directive to the Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo-led leadership followed insinuations by the Jonathan/Sambo Campaign Organization that the former Vice President manipulated the polls, which had asked people to indicate their preferred candidate.
Presidential spokesman Ima Niboro, contacted by SaharaReporters, dismissed the polls as “fake.” He shifted the burden of comment to Ike Abonyi, the spokesman to party chairman Okwesilize Nwodo, who feigned ignorance of the fact the polls had been published on the PDP website claiming that the party was busy conducting primaries and as such couldn’t have engaged in such partisan poll, especially since it must maintain neutrality in handling party primaries.