Rabiu Kwankwaso, presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), says he enjoys being “underrated” ahead of the presidential election.
Speaking in a Channels Television interview on Friday, Kwankwaso rejected pre-election opinion polls predicting Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) as the winner of the election.
In a Bloomberg poll released on Friday, Obi was said to be the preferred choice of the respondents ahead of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The poll was conducted by Premise Data Corp for Bloomberg News.
In September 2022, an NOI poll also placed Obi as the leading candidate with 21 percent of the votes. Tinubu and Atiku tied in second place with 13 percent of votes each, while Kwankwaso came fourth with three percent.
In many of the polls conducted by various organisations, Kwankwaso had always been rated in the fourth position.
Commenting on the development, the NNPP candidate said the polls were conducted via telephone, adding that 90 percent of his supporters are not on social media.
Kwankwaso alleged that the intention of the organisers of the polls is to cause crisis after the election and get financial donations for their preferred candidate.
“When we (LP and NNPP) were about to come together, I said that the only opportunity they (LP) had was for us to come together,” he said.
“We know what is happening. The first one (poll) that they released from his side — Peter Obi — they were giving me six percent in the north-west.
“Even a madman knows that I’m over and above six percent or even 60 percent. We had done it. We have seen the in-house figures of PDP and APC and they dare not bring them out.
“I always enjoy people who would want to underrate me. They had done that in 1999.
“As far as we are concerned in NNPP. We have locked northern Nigeria.
“Do you see any poll from northern Nigeria? All those polls were coming from the south and the media that is propagating that fake information is mainly from that part of the country.
“These things (polls) are on the telephone. Over 90 percent of my supporters don’t even know Twitter or social media. if you want to meet them, go to Wuse Market, go to the markets in Kano, go to the market in Sabo, Ibadan, go to markets in Rivers and the roads and so on, and ask people.”
