El-Rufai: Obi can’t win 2023 presidential election

Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, says the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, cannot win the February 25, 2023, presidential election.

El-Rufai, who described Obi as a Nollywood actor, said the former governor of Anambra State lacks the capacity to win the forthcoming poll.

He said this while speaking on TVC programme, Journalists’ Hangout, on Thursday.

Speaking on the polls predicting Obi’s victory, the governor said opinion polls are distorted, adding that most of them have high margins of error.

Governor El-Rufai added that the 2023 presidential election is between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

He said: “Opinion polls are distorted. Look, data analytics is one area that I’m in love with. When I was a student at the Kennedy School of Government, I was a teaching assistant for statistics, so I understand these things.

“I’m not talking as a politician who is a layman; I understand these things. The important thing is looking at the samples followed by your methodology.

“When you have about 100 million registered voters and you are sampling 2,000 registered voters or 300 registered voters, your results from day one are unreliable; they will have high margins of error. And most of these polls are like that.

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“What about methodology? Most of these polls, like the one by Bloomberg, ANAP and the one by Okonjo Iweala, all used telephone. What percentage of registered voters have phone numbers in INEC’s records? We have found out and it’s 31 per cent.

“So, from the beginning, you are starting with only 31 per cent of the total sample of voters. So, if you pick your sample of 31 per cent, from day one, your results are dead on arrival.

“I can take each and every one of these polls and deconstruct them because I understand what is sampling, I understand methodology and those polls are a joke, with the greatest respect.

“We have done a poll with a sample of nearly 40,000 across Nigeria and the result of the poll shows that we are ahead. It’s going to be a tight election, there are a large percentage of undecided, so we all must work hard to swing the undecided to our side. But we are ahead.”

El-Rufai added: “How can Peter Obi win any election? Peter Obi is polling only one per cent in Sokoto, two per cent in Katsina, five per cent in Kano, that’s where the votes are. All states are not equal.

“The fact that you are doing 70 per cent in Anambra State does not mean somebody doing 10 per cent in Kano is not better than you.

“Kano is four million votes that actually happen. The number of votes in Anambra is the number of one local government in Kano. All states are not equal.

“If you poll states and you make them equal, yes Peter Obi will sweep the southeastern states, he will do well in the South-South; where else? He’s not polling well in the South-West other than a drop in the ocean in Lagos.

“He’s polling in the Christian enclaves in the north but how many are they? Peter Obi cannot win the election. He doesn’t have the number of states, he doesn’t have 25 per cent in more 16 states, the last time we checked.

“He can’t go anywhere. Peter Obi is a Nollywood actor and that’s all he will be. This election is between the APC and the PDP because they have the footprint, they have the spread.

“Ethnicity and religious bigotry will not take you anywhere and that’s what the Labour Party campaign is all about,” the governor said.

The Star