Atedo Peterside: My support for Peter Obi doesn’t affect Anap/NOI polls’ integrity

Atedo Peterside, president of the Anap Foundation, says he will cast his vote for Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP).

Peterside, who spoke during a programme aired on Arise TV on Wednesday, said his support for the LP candidate did not influence the integrity of presidential polls carried out by his organisation.

Anap is one of the most consistent and prominent pollsters conducting opinion polls ahead of the general election in Nigeria. 

The organisation released three periodical polls on the presidential election in the past six months in which Obi maintained a lead in all.

The polls have generated mixed reactions among politicians across the country, with the All Progressives Congress (APC) once dismissing the methodology used as “deliberately skewed”.

Reacting to the misgivings, Peterside accused politicians of being discriminatory with acceptance of poll results. 

He said Anap held polls for some governorship elections where results showed their candidates were ahead, and they accepted those but disagreed when it went against them. 

The Anap founder added that partisanship has never influenced the results of NOI polls since 2015 till date.

“In 2015, I worked with Jonathan and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as his coordinating minister. We did an ANAP Foundation report stating that Muhammadu Buhari was ahead of him in the poll. There was fury in the villa from some people. But I said, integrity is not about being a member of one government or the other,” Peterside said. 

“In 2019, I made it clear I was supporting Atiku over Buhari again, and the poll showed PDP was behind also. Some members of the party also criticised it.”

Peterside stated why he would vote for Obi ahead of other presidential candidates.

“I know the three of them quite well, and if I have to make a choice. Let us say a first among equals. To answer why I would vote Peter Obi is because it represents a new way, a new path. And not because you are saying a new path is better,” he said. 

“But I even like the idea of a government that does not have the absolute majority in the parliament because we have seen that absolute majority abused.

“Where people bring rubbish economic policies and it’s rubber-stamped by their whole party. They put Nigeria aside and they approve it. I prefer an arrangement where nobody controls the national assembly and any policies there brought there must be in the national interest or there would be a bloodbath. 

“On the individual, people said he has no federal experience and I disagree slightly. I served with Peter Obi on the economic management team of former president Goodluck Jonathan for four years. It was like a period of tutelage. If he was always on the wrong side of every economic argument, I would never vote for him. I believe there is a new arrangement that he represents.”