Friday, 29th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Poll predicts close race between Agbaje, Ambode

By Editor
04 February 2015   |   7:28 pm
• Why PDP can’t win in Lagos, by APC  • Warns CP Mbu against partisanship A RECENT survey conducted for ANAP Foundation by NOIPolls shows a close race in the Lagos State governorship seat between the top two contenders, Jimi Agbaje, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Akinwunmi Ambode, of All Progressives Party…

Jimi

• Why PDP can’t win in Lagos, by APC

 • Warns CP Mbu against partisanship

A RECENT survey conducted for ANAP Foundation by NOIPolls shows a close race in the Lagos State governorship seat between the top two contenders, Jimi Agbaje, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Akinwunmi Ambode, of All Progressives Party (APC), with marginal five per cent point gap between the two. 

   When asked who respondents will be voting for in the coming February 2015 governorship elections, Ambode led the list of candidates with 26 per cent, while Agbaje had 21 percent.      

   However, 50 per cent of those polled are undecided as to their choice of candidate; and it is believed this significant proportion of voters would be critical in deciding who eventually wins the coveted seat.

   The survey results also show that both candidates have strong support from eligible voters across all age groups. However, a significant proportion of first time voters aged between 18 and 21 years (64 percent) are undecided as to their choice of candidate. 

   ANAP Foundation is a non-profit organisation committed to promoting good governance. ANAP has been carrying out a series of Elections polls since 2011 with the sole objective of providing information on opinion research during the election periods. 

  Meanwhile, the APC has said that alleged ‘plots by some leaders of the PDP to use’ Agbaje to ‘take over the commonwealth of the Centre of Excellence will not work.’

  The state APC in a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, that ‘Lagos will never become ‘pot of cash’ for those he called selfish leaders using the PDP candidate as a decoy to line their pocket and deny the millions of its resident the good things of life.’

  “The wishful dream that Nigeria’s industrial hub will soon become feeding bottles for some greedy politicians will collapse like a pack of quicksand with the routing of the PDP and its candidate in the February 28 governorship election,” it stated.

  “The enlightened Lagos voters will not gamble with the ballot and entrust their future into the hands of tainted leaders.

“The shallow-rooted dream of PDP and its candidate, Jimi Agbaje to take over Lagos will end in more resounding defeat as in the previous cases, as Lagosians will not, for anything hand over their state as feeding bottle for Agbaje’s godfathers.

  “A PDP takeover of Lagos is an unrealisable curse Lagosians will never visit on themselves given the wreckage the PDP has made of Nigeria and the states under its control in 16 years of corrupt and failed leadership.

“Lagos has passed that stage and it will ever be handed over to those who are pushing Agbaje for the purpose of seizing the flourishing state of Lagos and subjecting it to the kind of wreckage Nigeria has experienced under the PDP.

 “Lagosians, with their sophistication, will never toy with the idea of sacrificing 16 years of uninterrupted development for an untested candidate, whose sponsors have been key actors in the maladministration at the central.

  The statement added: “Even in its most desperate state, PDP in Lagos, Agbaje and his godfathers will never deny the fact known across partisan lines in Nigeria and beyond that Lagos has been lifted from the seedy slum the PDP labeled it with 12 years ago to the engine room of the Nigerian economy, with near perfect security, superlative infrastructures, healthier and cleaner environment, efficient health sector, sound educational sector, innovative judiciary, great traffic management, empowered workforce and enlightened citizenry.

“They will never argue the well-known fact that Lagos remains the most viable state in a Nigeria where the myth of oil is dying and states have to live on what they have invested in building an independent economy that will drive its survival.

“They will never debate the universally fact that Lagos, has in the last 16 years, tapped and developed the human resources potential needed to drive a modern state, one of the few mega cities in the world with millions of Nigerians displaced by PDP’s wreckage of a country that earned 16 years’ oil boom, daily fleeing to Lagos to find succour and survival.”

  In another statement, the APC said that it hoped that Mr. Joseph Mbu was not redeployed to Zone 2 for the purpose of doing the political hatchet of the PDP in the February election warning that such will backfire in Lagos and the South West. 

  The party said that Mbu’s antecedents have opened his latest posting to Lagos and Ogun to justifiable speculations that will become clearer as the 2015 election approaches.

  APC while welcoming Mbu, warned: “We want to warn Mbu that he is coming to Lagos, the hotbed of progressivism and the state that harbours the preponderance of Nigerian intelligentsia. We want to let him know that naturally Lagos is not tolerant of negative behaviours.

   “We therefore advise him to be objective and fair in dealing with all political interests en route February 2015. Lagos will ultimately prove his albatross should he come here for the purpose of enforcing the notorious interests of the PDP.”

0 Comments