Ahead of the 2027 presidential election, President Bola Tinubu has taken a slim lead over Nigeria Democratic Cingress (NDC) candidate, Peter Obi, in the latest Oxford–Metro Analytics National Trust Poll, beating him by 1,067 responses.
The online poll, which ended on September 7, had 69,110 approved and unflagged responses in its final dataset.
Tinubu attracted 24,469 responses, representing 35.41 per cent of the total, while Obi secured 23,402 responses, or 33.86 per cent.
Former Vice-President and African Democratic Congress (ADC) candidate, Atiku Abubakar occupied the third position with 18,430 responses, accounting for 26.67 per cent of the total participation.
The figures put Tinubu 1,067 responses ahead of Obi, equivalent to a margin of about 1.54 percentage points.
The geographical spread of the poll also pointed to notable shifts from the voting pattern recorded during the 2023 presidential election.
Tinubu, who carried 12 states in the 2023 election, emerged as the leading candidate in 20 states and the Federal Capital Territory in the online poll.
Obi and Atiku, meanwhile, recorded the highest number of responses in eight states each.
The poll indicated particularly strong changes in several northern states, with Tinubu gaining the lead in areas where he did not win the presidential vote in 2023.
He led in Kaduna, Katsina and Gombe, all of which were won by Atiku in the 2023 presidential election.
Tinubu also topped the poll in Kano, where the New Nigeria Peoples Party candidate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, won the presidential election in 2023.
At the geopolitical-zone level, Tinubu emerged ahead in the South-West, North-West and North-Central.
Obi recorded his strongest showing in the South-East and South-South, while Atiku dominated the North-East.
In the South-West, Tinubu polled 10,968 responses, representing 43.53 per cent of participation in the zone.
He also led in the North-West with 4,129 responses, accounting for 43.10 per cent of the region’s total.
In the North-Central, the President garnered 6,370 responses, representing 36.97 per cent of the votes recorded in the zone.
Obi’s strongest regional performance came from the South-East, where he secured 5,796 responses, representing 63.97 per cent of the total.
The Labour Party candidate also led in the South-South with 2,389 responses, accounting for 41.48 per cent of participation in the region.
Atiku’s strongest showing was in the North-East, where he received 1,235 responses, representing 55.46 per cent of the region’s total.
Despite Tinubu’s wider spread across the country, the poll showed a closely fought contest between the three leading candidates.
The 1,067-response gap separating Tinubu and Obi reflected the narrow difference between the two front-runners at the national level.
Some state-level results were even tighter, particularly where participation was relatively low.
In Kogi, for example, Tinubu recorded 39 responses, compared with 38 for Atiku and 33 for Obi, out of just 110 responses.
The one-response gap between Tinubu and Atiku in Kogi highlights the need for caution in interpreting results from states with small numbers of participants.
In the Federal Capital Territory, Tinubu polled 5,599 responses against Obi’s 5,278, giving the President an advantage of 321 responses. Atiku recorded 3,954 responses.
Rivers also produced a relatively close contest, with Tinubu receiving 975 responses, Obi 892 and Atiku 568, leaving an 83-response gap between the first and second candidates.
Among the other contenders, Omoyele Sowore received 1,016 responses, followed by Seyi Makinde with 519 and former President Goodluck Jonathan with 284.
Anita Zugwai-Chukwu polled 18 responses, Sandy Onor recorded six, while Prince Kennedy Ahanotu received two responses.
A total of 638 participants selected “I Do Not Trust Any Candidate Yet,” while 204 respondents were undecided and 122 chose “Other Candidate.”
The distribution of responses showed that a national lead did not necessarily correspond with dominance across all geopolitical zones or states.
While Tinubu led nationally and in three geopolitical zones, Obi maintained a commanding position in the South-East and recorded the highest number of responses in the South-South. Atiku, meanwhile, remained strongest in the North-East.
The poll’s participation was also unevenly distributed, with Lagos and the FCT alone accounting for 54.44 per cent of all responses.
The final dataset included 56 responses from Nigerians in the diaspora, but these were excluded from the six domestic geopolitical-zone tallies.
(VANGUARD)
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