The Misses
Among the plethora of hit-and-miss predictions in the February 25 2023 presidential election, was a three-series poll survey commissioned by ANAP Foundation and conducted by NOI Polls Limited. The first two, conducted by the company in September and December 2022, had tipped the candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi for victory. The third survey, released about nine days to the election, was more emphatic in its prediction. It stated that Obi was leading with 21 percent in voter preference, giving 13 percent to the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) got 10 percent. But when the votes in the February 25 election were counted, Obi came third among the four leading candidates. Tinubu won with 8,794,726 votes; Atiku came second with 6,984,520 while Obi came third with 6,101,533 votes. Another miss came from SBM Intelligence for Enough is Enough (EiE) Nigeria. The report also said Obi would win outright in 15 states with the 25 percent threshold in 25 of the 36 states. It gave 11 states to Atiku and the 25 percent target in 27 states. The poll rated Tinubu third with nine states and the mandatory 25 percent vote haul in just 20 states. On the contrary, Tinubu scored above 25 percent votes in 29 states; Atiku 25 states; and Obi 16 states.
Similarly, another poll conducted by an Abuja based firm, Kwakol, had tipped Obi to win by about 53 percent, giving Tinubu and Atiku below 20 percent apiece. Yet another survey, sponsored by Bloomberg News, also projected Obi as the potential winner with 66 of its poll participants going for the LP candidate. In the same vein, another outfit, Premise Data, reported that 72 percent of its poll participants indicated interest in Obi. The poll only mentioned Tinubu and Atiku as footnotes. In a separate poll by Nextier, Obi was rated as leading with over 40 percent, Atiku 26 percent and Tinubu a little above 20 percent.
However, a survey conducted by Political Africa Initiative (POLAF) in collaboration with BusinessDay came up with a different projection. It gave Atiku 38 percent, Tinubu 29 percent, Obi 27 percent and Kwankwaso five percent. It also missed it.
The hits:
Some of the poll surveys however got it right with varying degrees of accuracy. For instance, the one by Stears projected Tinubu to win in the event of low voter turnout. The election recorded about 27 percent turnout in line with the prediction. It turned out that the four leading contestants shared the vote percentage as follows: Tinubu 37, Atiku 29, Obi 25 and Kwankwaso six.
Also, Fitch Solutions Country Risk and Industry Research, predicted a win for Tinubu but raised the possibility of a run-off, which did not happen. Another one by the Nigerian Human Rights Community (NHRC) had also tipped Tinubu to win. The 134-member organisation released its report shortly before the election. The report gave votes from the survey’s 19365 respondents as follows: Tinubu 41 percent, Atiku 26 percent, Obi 21 percent and Kwankwaso six percent. The poll concluded Tinubu was the most dominant and widely accepted candidate in the race. In its own poll report, Dataphyte Research projected Tinubu to win the popular votes with 25 percent in more than 24 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). It however missed the target on FCT but was on point in its prediction that there would be no run-off. Similarly, an Abuja based Management Consultant, Dr. Nuradeen Auwal, also tipped the APC candidate for victory. Giving a summary of his research analysis, Dr Auwal stated: “From the analysis presented above, I predict that, as the night follows the day, Tinubu will emerge the winner of the 2023 presidential election”.
The prophets:
Prophets, pastors and church leaders of all hues and shades, had plunged into the murky waters of partisan politics with predictions that could hardly be said to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit. For some of them, it was a feast of malevolence in which the pulpit was deployed to vent their biases and ill will toward a particular candidate that they felt should not be on the ballot. Not a few crossed the lines between heresy and blasphemy just to promote their anointed candidate. A particular Pastor, who was sanctioned by some Western countries for recklessly linking the 5G (Fifth Generation Wireless) to the Covid-19 pandemic, took the campaign to frightening heights. This man of God saw a saint in his preferred candidate while the “Holy Spirit” showed him “demons and thieves” in others. Others of his ilk were no less vociferous in their attacks targeted at a particular one among the candidates. Many others spoke tongue-in-cheek prophesying in line with their prejudices. Election over, some of these men of God are still spitting fire over their failed predictions, which were in the main, inspired by forces abhorrent to the Holy Spirit. Thankfully, the winner of the election has, over the years, grown layers of skin thick enough to deflect poisonous darts. His is the big head that takes all the knocks. Tinubu has moved on.
However, one Prophet, Tomi Arayomi stood far from the madding crowd. Arayomi had declared that his preferred candidate was Peter Obi but that God revealed to him that it’s Tinubu that was going to win. The young Nigerian Prophet was also said to have predicted the victory of Mr William Ruto in the recent presidential election in Kenya.
Predictions: The 1983 election in perspective:
Predicting election outcomes and winners used to be in the realms of art and science, usually undertaken by professionals in the fields. Over time, the trend has gradually evolved into the realms of the spiritual and the metaphysical. Prophets, parapsychologists, marabouts and others laying claims to clairvoyance have since jumped onboard the wagon.
Those claiming to be witches and wizards are not left out of trade considered to be far above the forté of the uninitiated. In Nigeria, this supposedly mystical phenomenon has continued to gain prominence with every election circle. In the 1980s, two prominent Nigerian parapsychologists of that era, namely, Dr Gabriel Okunzua and Prof Godspower Oyewole dominated the public space with their predictions.
Dr Okunzua concerned himself mainly with public policies and topical national issues. Prof Oyewole on the other hand chose to dwell on election forecasting and predictions.
Oyewole became a household name during the short-lived Second Republic (October 1999 to December 1983). The 1983 presidential election, the second electoral circle in that truncated Republic, featured three major candidates in the race: Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe of the Nigeria People’s Party (NPP) and Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). Shagari was then incumbent President seeking re-election, having won his first election in 1979. About a year to that election, Prof Oyewole claimed to have crystal-gazed and predicted that the name of the eventual winner of the 1983 presidential election was in the Bible. He however, left his prediction hanging by not mentioning any name in particular. There was heightened anxiety that triggered desperation among the contenders, especially Chief Awolowo and Dr Azikiwe who were the two Christians in the race. Apparently to claim Oyewole’s prediction, Awo quickly exhumed his Christian name -Jeremiah while Zik went to the archives to also retrieve his baptismal name -Benjamin. Politicians anywhere don’t leave anything to chance no matter how trivial it may appear. The two foremost nationalists had long jettisoned their Christian names during the struggle for Nigeria’s independence. But Oyewole threw in some ice to dampen the aspirations of the UPN and NPP candidates. He went public to declare that the biblical name he saw in his crystal ball started with ‘S’. Neither Jeremiah nor Benjamin starts with S. Shagari and his NPN who were discomfited with the initial prediction were somehow relieved by the obvious elimination of Jeremiah and Benjamin in Oyewole’s letter ‘S’ prediction. But there was still a dilemma. Being a Muslim, it was obvious Shagari’s name could not have appeared anywhere in the Bible even when all his three forenames – Shehu Usman Aliyu are prefixed to
his surname. There was palpable tension in the Shagari camp. So the ruling party’s spin doctors swiftly went to work. They flipped through the Bible from the first to the last page in search of a name that starts with S to be appropriated for their candidate. They finally found the name Shamgar somewhere in the Book of Judges. Armed with the discovery, the party then revved its propaganda machine by digging deeper around the name Shamgar. They then discovered that Shamgar was indeed the son of one Anath. The Book of Judges recorded how God chose to use Shamgar, an unknown man, to accomplish His work. The story further indicated that Shamgar was used by God in a great way and that the man vanished back into the shadows afterwards. So the Shagari camp appropriated Shamgar for Shagari. Their Bible “search” also came up with claims linking Aliyu, one of Shagari’s forenames, to Eli, a Prophet in the Bible. And on the eve of the election, Oyewole pulled the veil off his obscure prediction.
According to him, the letter S in his prediction indeed stood for Shamgar, the son of one Anath in the Bible. That was the clincher the NPN spin doctors were waiting for. Shamgar, they proclaimed, was a biblical version of Shagari and that Anath was a version of Anetu, which they claimed was Shagari’s mother’s name. It was sheer trickery conceived by a chartered seer and executed by desperate politicians. What a thing about politics.
Credit: Gbade Ogunwale, The Nation
