Most Nigerians prefer mixed-faith presidential ticket – New poll

Ahead of the 2023 presidential election, eligible voters across Nigeria have overwhelming rejected same-faith presidential ticket, preferring to vote a mixed-faith ticket, a new poll has revealed

The poll was conducted by the African polling Institute (API), in partnership with BusinessDay.

The result revealed that 88 percent and 84 percent of the respondents said they would not vote for the same religion candidature for the same ticket at the presidential level, either a Muslim-Muslim ticket or a Christian-Christian ticket-respectively, but would rather vote for a mixed faith ticket at 82 percent.

The poll adopted quantitative approach involving telephone interviews administered to target respondent, in which a total of 1,135 completed interviews were captured out of 3,072 calls made, representing a response rate of approximately 37 percent.

The study also used a stratified Random Sampling Technique to representatively select citizens in all 36 states of the nation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Some section of Nigerians, especially Christian leaders, have condemned the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who settled for same-faith presidential ticket.

Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State, had picked Kashim Shettima, former Borno State governor as his running mate ahead of next February’s presidential poll.

The issue has continued to cause division in the APC, leading to defection of key leaders in recent weeks.

Read also: Muslim-Muslim ticket: Christianity would suffer at the seat of Nigeria’s sovereignty

The poll further revealed that majority of Nigerians (87 percent), express displeasure at the state of affairs, stating that the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Equally, only 7 percent of respondents affirmed the country is heading in the right direction, followed by 6 percent who refused to disclose their stand on the state of the country.

A further breakdown of the poll result shows that 71 percent of the respondents do not consider ethnicity as a factor in deciding who should lead the country, while only 17 percent affirmed ethnicity to be considered and 12 percent remain neutral.

The respondents identified five top institutions with significant roles in the 2023 general election as Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) 80 percent, the Police (20 percent), media (19 percent), the Army (15 percent), and electoral monitor and observers (13 percent) amongst others.

API is an independent, non-profit and non-partisan opinion research think-tank, which conducts opinion polls, surveys, social research, and evaluation studies at the intersection of democracy, governance, economic conditions, markets, and public life.