Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has rubbished opinion polls that tipped the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, to win the February 25 election.

During an appearance on TVC’s Journalists’ Hangout on Thursday, El-Rufai also dismissed polls that tipped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) flagbearer, Atiku Abubakar, to win the presidential election.

El-Rufai queried the sample and methodology used by ANAP and Bloomberg polls, stating the polls favoring Atiku and Obi to win the forthcoming presidential electios are nothing but a joke.

He said: “I am in love with data analysis. When I was a student at the Kennedy School of Government, I was a teaching assistant to statistics. The most important thing in looking at any opinion poll is the sample, followed by your methodology.

“When you have about 100 million registered voters and you are sampling 2,000 voters, I am sorry, your results from day one are unreliable. You will have a wide margin of errors. And most of those polls are like that.

“What about methodology? Most of these polls, like those by Bloomberg, the ANAP and a few others, used telephones.

“How many registered voters have their telephone on INEC’s record? It is just 31 per cent. So, from the beginning, your results are dead on arrival.

“I can take each of these polls and deconstruct them. This is because I understand sampling and methodology. So, with the greatest respect, those polls are a joke.”

The governor, however, admitted that the election will be tight, stating that the poll he conducted tipped the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, to win the forthcoming election.

El-Rufai said his polls revealed a large percentage of undecided voters, saying the ruling party must work hard to swing the undecided voters to their side.

He said: “We have done a poll with a sample of nearly 40,000 across Nigeria and the results show that we are ahead. It is going to be a tight election.

“The APC is the only party with a broad base of support across Nigeria and by the grace of God, the party will win.”