The poll released on Wednesday shows the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi as leading the presidential race with a vote of 21% while the presidential candidate of the NNPP, Rabiu Kwankaso has 3%.
The spokesperson for the New Nigerian People’s Party, NNPP presidential campaign, Abdulmumin Jibrin, has described the result of a recent opinion poll conducted by Anap Foundation as false.
The poll released on Wednesday shows the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi as leading the presidential race with a vote of 21% while the presidential candidate of the NNPP, Rabiu Kwankaso has 3%.
Jibrin, during an interview on Channels TV on Thursday, said a similar poll conducted by NOI in 2025 projected President Goodluck Jonathan as leading but Jonathan went on to lose the election.
“NOI in 2015 projected clearly that Jonathan is going to win the election, (Goodluck) Jonathan lost the election. Many other works that they have done, all have been proven wrong. There’s no work that they have done where you can see that the projections are right or anything.
“That’s the extent I will go in giving any recognition to that statement, it is absolutely false. It is not the representation of the reality on (the) ground, particularly if you’re talking about the northern part of the country.
“Repeatedly I have said this that in a matter of three, four months, the facts will emerge, Rabiu Kwankwaso has the northern part of Nigeria locked down,” he said.
He said although he believed in the candidature of Tinubu, the former Lagos governor is in a damaged party.
“The two other parties, in the case of APC (All Progressives Congress), it is damaged already and that’s why you see what APC does is to run its campaign around Asiwaju who I believe is a good pilot but the problem is not Asiwaju, the problem is the party.
“The party is damaged so it’s like saying you have a good pilot and you have a bad aircraft so what APC is asking Nigerians to do is to go and fly in a bad aircraft because they have a good pilot, it’s not going to work,” he said.
He added that Kwankwaso’s NNPP has locked down the northerner part of the country but now making inroads into the Southern part of the country to enable the party to win the 2023 presidential election.
He added, “We don’t like to pretend; where he has completely locked down is the northern part of the country but we are making sufficient inroads in the southern part of the country, that’s enough to make us win in this election.”
Jibrin said southwest Nigeria will vote for Tinubu since he is from there and the PDP will take a pinch everywhere in the country which will not be sufficient to win the 2023 presidential election.
“Every candidate has where he has dominance; for instance, if you talk about Asiwaju, Yorubas are not stupid, they will vote him in the presidential election but we as NNPP, we will be able to get some chunk of votes from Ibadan and Lagos. We are making sufficient inroads but at the end of the day, Asiwaju will still take it, Yorubas will vote theirs.
“For PDP, they will have a pinch of little here and there and it’s not going to be enough to make them win the election.
“The difference between both parties is that PDP is saying we agree we are bad but we are better than APC.”
He also said Peter Obi’s Labour Party cannot win because the party is divisive.
“The only place Obi will demystify structure is in the southeastern part of the country; that’s where whether he has a structure or doesn’t have a structure, he will make an impression because the level of party and their candidate are divisive elements and all they have done is just to divide them so therefore they cannot win the election,” he said.
Speaking on PDP’s chances, Jibrin noted, “In 2015, they were defeated. In 2019, they were defeated. In 2023, they will be defeated, they are not anywhere; their candidate is not a match for Kwankwaso in the northern part of the country.
“What APC does not want anybody to talk about is the fact that APC has been winning all these previous elections because they always start the election with a balance sheet of 12 million votes because of Buhari. Today, the 12 million votes are no longer there (so) for the first time in eight years or in ten years, APC will start a presidential election with zero votes.”