A new opinion poll conducted by the Nigerian Human Rights Community (NHRC), consisting of 134 organisations, has tipped the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to win the February 25, 2023 general election.

The group, at a briefing addressed by its Secretary-General, Taiwo Adeleye, in Lagos, yesterday, where it released its poll result, projected that Tinubu would win based on the analysis of the preferences of 19,365 persons that its researcher polled in January.

“NHRC poll revealed that the presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu holds a magnificent lead and is on course to win the 2023 general elections.”

Adeleye explained that the Polls also confirm a two-horse race for the second position between Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) came a distant fourth as all other contestants together scored an insignificant total.

According to the research, 7,940 (41 per cent) of those interviewed across the 774 local governments in the 36 states of the federation and Abuja said they preferred the candidate of the APC; 5,035 (26 per cent) indicated PDP’s Atiku; 4,067 (21 per cent) supported Labour Party’s Obi; while 1,743 (9 per cent) rooted for NNPPKwankwaso.
The other parties’ candidates collectively got 1,162 (6 per cent) of the respondents.

Adeleye said the poll results also predicted an outright win for Tinubu in 17 states (Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Cross River, Kwara, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Kaduna, Zamfara, Jigawa, Borno, Yobe and Gombe), securing 25 per cent of the respondents in 14 other states (Imo, Ebonyi, CRS, Edo, Benue, Plateau, FCT, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Adamawa, Bauchi, and Taraba), making 30 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

His closest rival, Atiku, is projected to win seven states, including Adamawa, Taraba, Sokoto, Edo, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, and Delta.
The respondents gave seven states to Obi. They include Anambra, Enugu, Imo, Ebonyi, Abia, Benue, and Rivers. He is also projected to win in Abuja.

Kwankwaso got only his Kano home state, while the three frontrunners are projected to battle for spaces in five states, Kebbi, Katsina, Bauchi, Plateau, and Rivers.

Explaining its methodology adopted in carrying out the research the group pointed out that the research took six months and random sampling was employed.

Adeleye explained that the questionnaires were in the three major Nigerian languages of Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa as well as pidgin.
It revealed, “From a socio-economics standpoint, religion, ethnicity, insecurity, inflation, rising poverty, and unemployment will be the determining factors during the February 25th presidential elections.

“While party loyalty, candidate integrity, political will, and track record will dominate the political reasons for voting. In addition, social media, mobile communications, and, INEC’s decision to embrace the use of technology will create more awareness and influence voters’ visions, while also curbing vote rigging and electoral violence.”

The group noted that its deductions were based on careful consideration of the respondents’ views on religion, ethnicity, party loyalty, and integrity of the candidates, adding that respondents from the North-west, North-east and some North-central states indicated their willingness to vote based on party loyalty and religion with APC enjoying more party loyalists within a Muslim-dominated population.

NHRC said the Southwestern states were likely to vote based on historical factors that favour the APC presidential candidate, being a former Lagos State governor with a far-reaching network and consistent political activities since 1991, grassroots campaign of the APC, incumbency factor of the APC controlled state governments in the South-west, party loyalty and ethnicity, which will equally favor the APC.

According to it, the Labour Party will enjoy an overwhelming majority in the South-east due to ethnicity and religious sentiment, while states like Plateau in the North-central might align with these sentiments to register sizable votes for the Labour Party on the basis of religion.

The group said the study foresaw the PDP maintaining a significant presence in its traditional areas of the South-south and the two North-east states of Adamawa and Taraba while getting significant percentages in most North-west and North-east states.

Nigerian Human Rights Community (NHRC), a coalition of 135 civil society and community-based groups spread across Nigeria, has called on Federal Government to address the political exclusion of Itsekiri indigenous communities in Delta State, which stems from alleged disobedience of court orders in their favour by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with implications on democracy, liberty and justice.

Taiwo Adeleye, who spoke on behalf of the group, said that giving Itsekiri recognition would go a long way to calm them and eliminate recurrent agitations.

He said: “NHRC received complaints from the people of Warri, including women, men, workers, artisans and community-based organisations concerning the delineation of 10 Wards in Delta State which affects the electorate in the designated area. Their rights to vote as entrenched in the Nigerian constitution has been fought for many years culminating in a court judgment.

“After protracted legal fireworks, the High Court in Benin declared in the Judgment that ‘the creation of new wards done by INEC in 1998 was done in flagrant disobedience to the order of the court. INEC filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal in Benin, which was struck out on Tuesday, October 23, 2018.

“Though the court agreed that INEC had no right and cannot re-delineate the wards, nothing has been done to affect the change by reverting to the 10 ward structure,” he said.

At the meeting, which was attended by the Vice-Chairman, Itsekiri National Youth Council (INYC), Edgar Oritsetimeyin, and three other members of INYC, NHRC called on INEC to revert to the 10 Ward structure in Warri South Local Government Area and accordingly align all materials to be printed and produced for the 2023 general election with the said court judgment as was recently done in the case of Imo, Bayelsa and Bauchi state governorship election results where the Commission was seen to have complied with court judgments.

The Nigerian Human Rights Community (NIHRCO), a coalition of over 100 civil society and community-based groups, says Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s election victory reflects the will of the people.

Sanwo-Olu polled 762,134 votes to defeat Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, his closet rival, who had 312,329, during the governorship election held on March 18.

At a briefing in Lagos on Thursday, the coalition presented its preliminary report on the Lagos guber election.

NIHRCO said it deployed 680 observers across the 20 LGAs and local council development areas (LCDAs) in the state on election day.

The coalition said its observations took a “dialectical overview of the strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats before, during and after the election”.

Speaking on its preliminary findings, the coalition said the shortcomings recorded during the election were not enough to undermine its outcome.

NIHRCO argued that no election is 100 percent perfect globally, adding that total condemnation of the March 18 election process and the outcome is “absolutely wrong and unprofessional”.

The Ekiti election should serve as a template to conduct other elections in Nigeria, for Ekiti to have been the first state to release its result showed the effectiveness of the process, despite the laudable efforts of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the process recorded some irregularities.

We think Nigeria needs to learn a lot from the conduct of the National Election in Ekiti State. The election materials arrived as early as 7am in 90 percent of the polling units. The party agents conducted themselves in the most civil manner without pronounced cases of skirmishes.

The security operatives were well detailed and professional in their conduct. We commend the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) officials and the police for their professional conduct during the exercise.

There was lack of intimidation of voters, no vote buying, while polling boxes were not snatched or destroyed during the exercise.

We see this as a very impressive development. It’s a lesson Nigeria needs to emulate.

The governor provided true leadership. Respondents said he consulted widely with all the political parties and drew commitment of non violence. It worked for the outcome of the hitch-free election.

One of the lessons is that the mindset, orientation, and perspective of the political and cultural leadership is important in determining the outcome of elections.

Where political leaders consciously preach against violence through constructive engagement with stakeholders, irrespective of their political leaning, the prospect of having a free and fair election will be very high.

Lack of mobility for voters and the negative impact of the CBN’s cash crunch denied many voters the opportunity of travelling to their communities to cast their votes.

We also observed that Ekiti needs more polling booths. The distance between one polling booth and the others fall below global standards.

We urge INEC to list Ekiti State as one of the communities that are in crucial need of more polling units. From our estimation, Ekiti needs no fewer than 500 more polling units to be able to meet the electoral expectations of the population.

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