A poll organized by Special Assistant to the President on New Media, Reno Omokri, which pitched President Goodluck Jonathan as the presumptive Peoples Democratic Party, PDP nominee and Muhammadu Buhari as the presumptive All Progressive Congress (APC) nominee has been won by President Jonathan.
The poll, which was hosted on Build Up Nigeria website showed an early lead for the President before it was hijacked by the opposition leaning website, SaharaReporters which did a story on the poll and asked its supporters to vote including a link to the poll in their story. After heavily promoting the story, the votes changed in favour of General Muhammadu Buhari as most readers and followers of Sahara Reporters are opposition leaning.
They put up taunting headlines such as Buhari Wallops Jonathan! (see pictures).
Poll results shown by Sahara Reports (Screen grab from Facebook)
Poll results shown by Sahara Reports (Screen grab from Facebook)
To confuse people, Premium Times, another opposition leaning site, reported erroneously that the poll had closed after Buhari had overtaken the President, when in fact the poll was still up and running.
But as their supporters tired of voting and started to celebrate their ‘victory’ the votes continued their previous trend with President Jonathan catching up and overtaking Buhari.
Final Poll Results (Screengrab from Build Up Nigeria)
Final Poll Results (Screengrab from Build Up Nigeria)
The poll lasted three (3) days, and out of a total of 26,595 persons that voted, General Buhari got 12,875 votes, representing 48.41% percent of the total votes cast, while President Jonathan got a winning 13,111 votes, representing over 49% percent of the total votes and thus winning the poll at the expiration of its 3-day duration.
Is this a sign of what to expect in 2015?
Courtesy: The Trent
