The Delta State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate, Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori has thrice in the last five days demonstrated that he is the leading candidate in next month’s governorship election.
This new pointer to his being the leading candidate in the election emerged from three different polls freshly conducted with results analyzed and released a day ago. The three bodies that conducted the opinion polls are; Good Governance Alliance (GGA), A New Order Now (ANON) and The Future of Delta (TFD). While the first two, GGA and ANON are Lagos and Asaba based organizations respectively, TFD is a Warri based research think tank. While GGA and ANON conducted their polls online, TFD conducted a hybrid poll deploying online and real time.
The polls spread across the twenty-five local councils and ensured the participation of people of different age groups and professionals as well as market women.
GGA based its poll on yardsticks that are the pillars of good governance such as: manifesto, vision and mission, campaign content, character and integrity, acceptability, education and knowledge, understanding of governance and development issues in Delta State and Consensus building in a multi-ethnic state. Of the two thousand respondents who participated in the poll seventy-two percent of them gave thumbs up for Oborevwori as the candidate whose track records, manifesto, vision and mission and campaign content suit Delta State.
They also rate him very high in terms of acceptability and understanding of governance and development issues in Delta State. Oborevwori scored distinctively on consensus building in a multi-ethnic state. The respondents ascribed sixteen percent to the Senator Ovie Omo-Agege of the All Progressives Congress (APC) whom many of them described as having abandoned real campaign issues and taken on abuses, inflammatory language and hate speech. All the respondents scored him zero on consensus building.
The polls also projected Oborevwori to win in twenty-one out of the twenty-five local government councils. Omo-Agege is projected to win three while Chief Great Ogboru of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) who got twelve percent will win one.
Similarly, the poll conducted by ANON also puts Oborevwori far ahead of the other candidates. ANON based its poll on the following: manifesto and campaign message, capacity and the ideals of Delta State, antecedents and trust as well as pan-Delta vision. The respondents scored Oborevwori high on all the yardsticks and he chalked up seventy-one percent of the three thousand respondents’ approval. Omo-Agege and Ogboru came second and third with nineteen and ten percent respectively. However, Oborevwori is projected to win twenty out of the twenty-five local councils, while Omo-Agege and Ogboru will win four and one respectively. Omo-Agege again scored zero on pan-Delta vision.
The polls by the Warri based TFD also projected Oborevwori as the clear winner. The criteria used here are: manifesto and campaign content, reception of campaign message, pan-Delta character, integrity, acceptability and character. Oborevwori again did very well accumulating seventy-two percent from the two thousand respondents. However, while Ogboru came second with sixteen percent, Omo-Agege came third with twelve percent therefore marking a difference with the other two polls. The TFD polls projected Oborevwori to win in twenty-one local government councils, while Ogboru and Omo-Agege shared the other four with both of them winning two each.
Many of the respondents rated Oborevwori high for what they called his political consistency, staying power and learning the ropes cutting across executive and legislative arms.
They also ascribed a lot of political experience to him for running the most stable House of Assembly in the history of Delta State and for being the longest Speaker ever with the rare feat of being re-elected. As for the issue of integrity and character, most of the respondents said that the Supreme Court rested that matter and cleared him last year.
They also see him as a pan-Delta leader who will run the State as one and based on consensus. His manifesto which he anchored on MORE (Meaning development Opportunities for all, Realistic reforms and Enhanced peace and security) was also highly rated because the respondents saw it as speaking to the peculiarities of Delta State.
They consider him as one with demonstrable capacity.
The three opinion polls coming just about one month to the Delta State governorship election should be seen as a final predication on the outcome of the election.
Hon. Oborevwori has, as the three polls indicated, done well in articulating the right message and perspective in his bid to govern Delta State. He has also taken his message round the State in an amicable manner.
The majority of Deltans have also come to identify with his message and aspiration.