#Nigeria decides

In all countries of the world, elections are characteristically preceded by a strong desire in the citizenry to know who would eventually carry the ballot. All the posturing, politicking, electioneering campaigns and last minutes actions of government can only  heighten the inquisitiveness of the electorate and other stakeholders.
It gets worse when the election at stake is as decisive and competitive like the one Nigeria will witness tomorrow. In such circumstance, people recourse to anything they think can give them inkling into who would win.

But over the years opinion polls have come to the rescue in this regard. It has very much helped the populace to see through the grandstanding of candidates and their parties into knowing how rooted such posturing is and what is giving it the bounce. Nigeria’s 2015 presidential election heavily fits into the type of election when the people cannot wait till the D-Day to call the bluff of those strongly taking particular positions as to who would win. With the anxiety reaching a fever pitch barely one week to the March 28 date for the election, DAILY POST like a handful of other Nigerian media houses and organizations conducted a survey to depict who the online community in Nigeria thinks will win the election.

Judging by the response to former polls conducted by this newspaper, the outcome of this edition very much confirmed how truly interested Nigerians are on who would become the winner of tomorrow’s election. The opinion poll was opened to respondents at 1pm on Friday, March 20 to 2pm and closed on Tuesday March 24, 2015. A total of 10,423 votes were recorded.

Great care was taken to make this online poll very credible. Nobody could have voted twice as voting was based on unique computer IP address.

At the close of the poll which asked: “Who would you vote for right now – GEJ or GMB?” a good majority of the respondents numbering 6,849 and constituting 65.71 per cent voted for General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) while a lesser 2,951 number of respondents making up 28.31 per cent would rather vote for Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ). There were those who with their votes opted for the other 12 presidential candidates. Respondents in this category numbered 623 and constituted 5.98 per cent.

Respondents commented via three platforms. While 77 comments were made on the opinion poll portal, 104 others were posted on DAILY POST site that has the poll. But out of the total 188 comments, 50 were invalidated since they were posted as replies and were centered on issues alien to the topic concerned. From the remaining 131 comment, Gen Muhammadu Buhari was still on a clear lead as the bloggers that voted for him were 95 (77%) as against the 41 others (33%) whose comments favoured the candidacy of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. It is however worth stating that none of those who commented through the two platforms said anything of the other candidates.

The third platform used by respondents to comment was on the DAILY POST page on Facebook where a record 1,539 comments were elicited by the poll. Enthusiasm for each of the candidates was on free displayed on this forum as the fans did not fail to pick on those who posted negative comments about their candidate. This was majorly the reason why number of invalid comments rose as high as 129. This number was also bloated by bloggers who used the thread to advertise and post unrelated matters.

However, Buhari’s supporters on Facebook were in the overwhelming majority as 1001 of them constituting 71 per cent used their posts to vote in support of Buhari. Those supporting Jonathan were in the minority as 409 of them taking up the remaining 29 per cent used their comments to state that they would vote for Jonathan. Ansa Ewa Henshaw observed this barely 24 hours after the poll was opened by posting, “Out of 347 entries so far, 220 for GMB and still counting. Who says GMB is not winning this 2015 presidential elections? Sai Baba” Mr-Jaytee Jonathan Adaidu also h