What Nigeria’s Largest Voting Bloc Wants From Atiku, Kwankwaso, Obi, Tinubu

Three different polls conducted in Nigeria have presented before the top presidential candidates the aspirations, concerns, and demands of various voting blocs ahead of the 2023 general elections.

The polls, which were conducted by Bloomberg, African Polling Institute (API)/BusinessDay and NOI Polls/ANAP Foundation, said the major demands of Nigerian voters centred on the economy, jobs, corruption, and security.

The Bloomberg survey had a total of 3,973 Nigerians as respondents from September 5 to September 20. Respondents to the app-based poll were selected from quotas developed by age, gender, and location across the country’s six geopolitical zones.

Three-quarters of the respondents said the country was heading in the “wrong direction.” A combined 88 percent listed the economy and jobs, corruption, and security as the most important issues facing their communities.

The results were then weighted against the original quotas to ensure national representation. About 44 percent of Nigerians own smartphones, according to the Alliance for Affordable Internet.

The poll was conducted by API, in partnership with BusinessDay, aimed at gauging the perception of Nigerians towards the 2023 elections. It was conducted nationwide between July 18 and 22, 2022.

The result revealed that more than 80 percent of the respondents rejected a same-faith presidential ticket, preferring to vote a mixed-faith ticket.

The poll adopted a quantitative approach involving telephone interviews administered to target respondents, in which a total of 1,135 completed interviews were captured out of 3,072 calls made, representing a response rate of approximately 37 percent.

The survey also used a stratified Random Sampling Technique to representatively select citizens in all 36 states of the nation and the Federal Capital Territory.

ANAP Foundation released in September the result of an opinion poll conducted for it by NOI Polls on the forthcoming presidential election which showed Peter Obi of the Labour Party holding a significant eight percent lead over Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party. Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian People’s Party trailed them in the fourth position.

ANAP Foundation has been conducting such polls since 2011 through NOI Polls. Its founder, Atedo Peterside, said the latest was conducted in early September and asked respondents the same question: “Suppose the presidential election is being conducted today, who are you likely to vote for.”

The poll described the presidential contest as a three-horse race and gave Obi an eight percent lead with 21 percent votes over Tinubu and Atiku, who each got 13 percent of the votes to end up as joint second in the poll. Kwankwaso was fourth with three percent of the votes.

ANAP Foundation said only just over half of the respondents said they had made up their minds on whom to vote for on February 25, 2023. “Undecided voters and those who prefer not to reveal their preferred candidate add up to a whopping 32 percent and 15 percent respectively.”