Introduction
Although the sixth presidential election in Nigeria's Fourth Republic is scheduled to hold on February 25, 2023, at a time that Nigerians can best be described as long-suffering and resilient given the pains coming from both the actions and inactions of government . Despite these ominous signs, campaigns by political parties have continued with familiar headaches like violence, assassinations, denial of public facilities to the opposition, abuse of the social media for misinformation, amplification of noise over substance in campaigns, hate speeches and even disrespect for the spirit and letter of the Peace Accord. Sadly, across the six geo-political zones, fatalities of pre-election violence are already counting.
As the election day approaches, this piece examines the phenomenon of pre-election polling because of its implications for post-election violence and the legitimacy of the 2023 elections.
Indeed, a known cause of post-election violence is the violent expression of disappointment by supporters convinced that their candidates could only have lost due to rigging or electoral fraud.
Recent instances in the United States of America on 6 January, 2020, and 8 January, 2023, and historically in Nigeria in 1964/1965, 1983 and 2011 bear witness to this phenomenon. In all these instances, the raison d'être of the spontaneous violence was that the outcome negated the expectation of the followers who were convinced that their preferred candidate was rigged out.
Pre-Election Polls on Nigeria's 2023 Presidential Race
As a feature of modern democracies, pre-election opinion polls are respected scientific tools provided they are free from intellectual swindles and disguised partisanship and that is why there must full disclosure of their sample, representativeness in terms of geographic and demographic spread, the methods and instruments used, and the margin of error provided in the final analysis. Therefore, it must be based on evidence and not on eminence.
Except for Rabiu Kwankwaso, the presidential candidate of the New Nigeria People's Party (NPP), there are results of polls by eminent organisations predicting victory for the three other leading candidates. For instance, ANAP, Bloomberg,Stears,New Nextier and Daily Trust have conducted pre-election polls predicting the victory of the Labour Party's candidate, Mr. Peter Obi. Pre-election polls by Fitsch Solutions and Country Risk Research as well as the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) predicted victory for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the incumbent All Progressives' Congress (APC). Polls have also predicted the triumph of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Waziri Atiku Abubakar. Already, results of pre-election polls have become contentious as the frontrunners have rejected polls predicting the victory of candidates other than themselves.
Situating Pre-Election Polls Results in a Fractious Context: Need to Worry?
Conducting elections at the period known as the most volatile in Nigeria's history, what do multiple, contradictory, and contentious polls portend for the predictability of post-election violence after the 2023 presidential election? Mindful of the fact that despite being adjudged as the most transparently conducted as at then, the outcome of the 2011 presidential election still elicited widespread post-election violence especially in the northern part of the country.
How can we prevent a repeat of the post-election violence that greeted the result of the 2011 presidential election across states in the northeast and northwest where the followers of the candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Muhamadu Buhari broke loose because they felt he was rigged out based on their pre-election expectations. We should not forget that years after, healing cannot be seen to have fully occurred because of the losses suffered by those affected.
In the present, my concern stems from the similarity in the mannerism and enthusiasm of the followers of Mr. Peter Obi especially on the social media and the assertion of his spokesman that Obi can only lose if the election was stolen on 23/2/23 while featuring on Channels TV.
Mindful of the strong presence of the Obidents on the social media and its potency for violent mobilisation, the volatility of the southeast where Obi hails from and Obi's strategy of patronising religious and ethnic minorities in his campaigns, the results of the pre-election polls should be of interest to students of post-election violence and security.
This is because analysts have identified opacity and inadequacies in their methodologies and outcomes. As a product of elites and the enlightened class, the potency of opinions expressed in these polls to stir post-election violence should not be casually dismissed especially when considered with the plausibility of existing active violent groups across the country becoming sympathetic to any of the candidates. Also, disputations arising from the pre-election polls can interact akin to adverse drug reaction, with thuggery, flagrant disregard for Peace Accord and the misuse of the and social media for misinformation as already identified by INEC and other stakeholders to ignite violence.
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Conclusion and Recommendations
Given the fragility of inter-group relations and the tense atmosphere within which the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria is holding, the polls might have inadvertently entered the list of predictors of post-election violence. They can be instrumentalised by elections deniers to pose credibility questions that may mar the election outcomes for which necessary safeguards should be effectively emplaced.
Therefore, to prevent being used for such an untoward outcome, the National Peace Committee (NPC), INEC, development partners, and other non-partisan stakeholders in the polity should set standards for conducting pre-election polls. Such standards should include full disclosure of their funders and political leaning, methodology, sample, the questionnaire, the mode of interview, and more importantly weighting, that is, statistical adjustments for those matter for the results but were not reached during the polling.
Gbemi Animashahun is with the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies, University of Ilorin.
