It was fascinating seeing sections of the media go into an orgasmic frenzy at the news from Bloomberg that Peter Obi was going to win the February 25, 2023 election by a landslide.
Fascinating, because our media have still not purged themselves of the habit of reigning on foreign media to tell them what is happening in their own homeland.
I remember when Abacha died on June 8, 1998. The frustration many Nigerians had was that some Nigerian news outlets refused to confirm the rumour of his death until they confirmed it from either the BBC or CNN, and in confirming it, they played newsreel from these foreign media.
Forty six years after General Murtala Muhammed gave his now famous ‘Africa has come of age’ speech on January 11, 1976, some might still raise the query, has Africa really come of age?
That question is very valid given that in the year 2022, in the month of October, some in the media can actually believe that a political lightweight like Peter Obi can win a national election, and with 72% of the vote at that!
His Obidients can be forgiven. They are groupies, and Peter Obi is their superstar. So of course they will believe that he can squeeze out water from stone. They drank the Kool-Aid. It is the Jim Jones phenomena.
But why would the media even allow itself to be so deluded?
First and foremost, even Bloomberg does not even believe that story. If you read that publication, as I did, you will see that they farmed out the poll to a San Francisco based pollster who did an “app based” poll.
Now, since they mentioned San Francisco, they very likely used Survey Monkey, whose offices I have visited in California.
The term ‘app based’ was used deliberately to deceive the gullible, in much the same way as fancy restaurants use the term ‘omelette’ to describe fried eggs, so they can charge a higher premium. But an omelette, shorn of its sexed up name, is just regular fried eggs.
The greatest mistake Peter Obi made was getting high on app based polls that predict victory for him. And now, a section of the media has joined him.
In case you do not know what app based means, it simply means the pollsters behind the poll did it on an app, like Twitter or survey monkey. Now, why does this matter? Because, Nigeria has a disproportionately higher number of Southerners than Northerners on social media.
Remember that English is used for most apps, which favours Southerners. That is why Northern Nigerian participation on Facebook was minimal, until Facebook integrated Hausa into its app in September of 2016, after Mark Zuckerberg’s August 2016 visit to Nigeria. Other apps have yet to follow suit.
Look at states that did well in INEC’s online voter registration. The top 10 are dominated by Southern states. Now, look at the states that did well in physical registration. Other than Lagos and Oyo, the top 10 are the dominated by Northern states.
If there is one platform Northerners dominate, that medium is radio. That is why the world’s major powers ALL invest in a Hausa language broadcast service.
BBC Hausa, for example, has a weekly audience of 17.7 million. Whereas the highest rating that the BBC has in The UK (its home country) is 14.8 million (BBC Radio 2). App based polls will always disproportionately favour Southern Nigeria, because Northerners are on radio, while Southerners are on social media.
According to Statistica, 30.9% of Nigerians speak only Hausa. Obviously, any app based poll will not, and in fact, cannot capture that portion of our population.
As a Southerner, when last did you tune into radio? As a Northerner, when last, if ever, did you visit Twitter? You see? QED!
It is just like Big Brother Nigeria. The craze fuelling BBNaija is not driven by television per se. It is fuelled by Southern Nigerian youths on social media. BBNaija hardly features in Northern Nigeria. It is a Southern thing.
Anyone who allows himself to get drunk on polls prepared by Southerners and foreigners, who have never lived in Northern Nigeria, as I have, and who assume, wrongly, that one size of poll fits all, is not very knowledgeable about Nigeria. What a great disappointment awaits them in 2023!
While no poll is 100% accurate, the best polls are those done by boots on the ground, going from door to door, and talking with real people, and verifying that they are on the electoral roll, or register, and then posing a series of questions to them. Those are usually the polls with the least margin of error.
The next best polls are phone polls, wherein, the pollster gets a list of phone numbers in an area, and then compares them against the electoral roll or register, and calls selected people chosen due to their age, residence, gender and likely political persuasion.
The very worst polls are app based polls, where you host a poll on an app and publish it for people to respond, without verifying who they are, where they live, and what their political persuasions are.
And another thing, it is almost impossible, some would say even impossible, to stop double voting on app based polls.
Someone from Ukraine, who has been paid by one of the candidates, can vote 2000 times. And the simple size certainly made that cheaply possible.
Bloomberg admits that their pollster sampled only 3973 people, who may or may not even have been Nigerians.
Please note that the following is not meant to be a criticism of any of the Presidential candidates, or their followers. Rather, it is intended as a honest reflection of the state of the race as at October, 2022.
Of course Peter Obi will do well in the Southeast. Only an ignoramus would not concede that obvious fact. But beyond South-South states with a sizeable Igbo population, he will not do as well elsewhere, though there are a few areas where he might pull a surprise.
These so called ‘one million man marches’ are mostly a gathering of traders in various Nigerian towns and cities, who close down their markets (that are HEAVILY dominated by people of Southeastern origin), to do what in the military is called a show of force.
Waziri Atiku Abubakar will win by a very large margin in the Northwest and Northeast. Whatever votes he does not get in the Northeast will be mopped up by Shettima, on behalf of Tinubu. Peter Obi is almost nonexistent in those zones, and his recent comments during his AriseTV interview that he will “negotiate with agitators” has not done much to endear him there. Bola Tinubu will win by a large margin in the Southwest, except in Lagos, where both Atiku and Obi will make inroads.
I suspect that Obi will do better than expected in the city centres of the Southwest (places like Ibadan, Akure, Abeokuta, etc). The only reason Tinubu will carry the Southwest is because of the rural areas. Obi is not doing much to capture the votes of people who do not speak either English or Igbo.
All three major candidates will divide the democratic spoils in the North-Central, with Benue possibly going 50-30-20 in favour of Atiku-Obi-Tinubu, and Plateau perhaps going 50-30-20 in favour of Atiku-Tinubu-Obi.
Niger will definitely go to Atiku, while Kwara and Kogi will be split between Atiku and Tinubu in a margin that is presently difficult to foretell. It is possible that Obi will do better than expected in Nasarawa, and the Federal Capital Territory.
A lot of people allowed their outrage at Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim ticket bound them to the pragmatism behind the decision.
Tinubu’s calculation in picking a Northern Muslim as running mate was against the background of the emergence of Obi as Labour’s candidate and the fear that Northern Christians may go for Obi. If Obi had not emerged, a Northern Christian running mate would have been more saleable for the APC.
Peter Obi cannot win the 2023 Presidential elections. He knows it. I know it. And you about to insult me knows it in your sub conscious, though your conscious mind is rejecting what your unconscious is telling you.
The main beneficiary of his campaign is not even the Southeast. Toe to toe, Tinubu would be eviscerated by Atiku. But with Obi in the race, more of PDP’s votes will go to Obi, compared to the number of APC’s votes going to him.
The most sophisticated voters in Nigeria (and the most sophisticated people perhaps in Sub Saharan Africa), are the Yorubas. Their leaders know what they are doing. It is called ‘softly, softly, catchee monkey’. They don’t do gra gra. If what happened to them in 1993 had happened to some other people, it would have led to war. But see how they handled it and still put Obasanjo in Aso Rock for right years. The end justifies the means!
The Yoruba understand the true meaning of the word strength. While some others think strength is just physical power, the Yoruba understand that strength is any skill that you can use to assert your will. They use what they call ‘ogbon’.
That is why in 1998, a very powerful Yoruba political gladiator told his son ‘Let us split ourselves. You go to PDP. I will stay in APP. If PDP wins you will help me. If APP wins, I will help you.’ If they were from elsewhere, all of them will join the same party!
They are not an emotionally excitable people, who cannot see beyond their noses, and believe that they can put out the sun by blowing at it with their mouths. Without Peter Obi in the race, Bola Tinubu would have had no chance. Peter Obi is not the Southeast’s chance. He is Tinubu’s chance! He has helped him level the real race, which is between him and Atiku. For Tinubu, Obi is the best early Christmas gift ever!
Yes, David brought a stone to a sword fight and still defeated Goliath, but David was powered by faith, not by delusion. Faith is very different from delusions fuelled by app based polling in a country where majority of the electorate are not even on social media. With faith, you depend on the voice of God. With delusion, you depend on the voice of men who do not know what they are doing.
I urge Nigerians to elect a leader that is capable. Forget about whether you like him or not. You are not voting for a best friend. You are voting for someone to clear the mess created by the APC in the last 7 years. Whether you like the person is not as important as whether he can perform
Congratulations!
The simultaneous Obidient rallies at Festac, Amuwo, Lekki, Kaduna, and other towns and cities across Nigeria, was AMAZING. They are a great achievement, and anyone who tries to belittle them is not politically astute. It is not just the sheer number of attendees. Imagine the logistics behind organising people at different ends of the nation. Commendable. Very commendable. While Obi will not win in 2023, he has successfully disrupted politics in Nigeria. Take Kaduna state. On August 15, 2022, Nasir El-Rufai boasted that Obi won’t get “two hundred persons on the street.” Today, we saw close to 2000. Yes, a lot of them are persons of Southeastern origins. But for one man’s ambition to mobilise them in such mesmerising numbers is something to be admired. Politics without bitterness should be encouraged. Well done Obi. Well done Obidients! Just a little piece of advice: Tone down the insults and aggressiveness, then the number of people of non Southeastern origin in your movement will increase. Remember your goal. You are preparing for an election, not an insurrection.
*First published in Omokri’s column #TheAlternative in ThisDay on Tuesday
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