The All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, may prevail in the 2023 election, according to the Fitch Solutions Country Risk & Industry Research.
APC candidate had a stronger chance of winning, according to the local arm of global rating agency Fitch Ratings, which also noted that Tinubu’s victory would lead to political upheaval in Nigeria.
It forewarns that if Tinubu wins, there would probably be more demonstrations and social unrest in the nation.
According to it, if the APC candidate wins, it will probably lead to feelings of perceived marginalization among Christians, and supporters of his rivals may protest the legitimacy of the election.
The organization also pointed out that recent polls, which only represent a small portion of Nigerians, overestimated support for Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party.
It said, “Indeed, we maintain our view that the ruling party’s Bola Ahmed Tinubu is the candidate most likely to win the presidential election as a split opposition vote will favour the All Progressives Congress. Protests and social discontent are likely to ramp up in the aftermath of a Tinubu win since this would end the recent trend of the presidency alternating between Muslims and Christians.
“At Fitch Solutions, we believe that recent polls are significantly overstating support for Peter Obi, the Labour Party candidate running in Nigeria’s February 2023 presidential election. Surveys showing that Obi is ahead of his opponents Bola Tinubu (All Progressives Congress) and Atiku Abubakar (Peoples Democratic Party) were mostly based on responses gathered online. Since only 36.0% of Nigerians use the Internet (World Bank, 2020), we believe that these results are skewed towards urban, affluent voters who are most likely to support Obi. We also highlight that these polls suggest that a large share of voters remain undecided.”
The article claims that Obi won’t have much support in the North of Nigeria, which is home to a large Muslim population.
The international credit rating agency added that it did not anticipate material policy changes under a Tinubu president, particularly with regard to the elimination of fuel subsidies.
“While Tinubu has stated that he would phase out Nigeria’s costly fuel subsidy, we are sceptical this will happen in the short term. There appears to be limited appetite within the APC to remove the subsidy, and with inflation remaining elevated in 2023 – due to high food prices – the cancellation of the subsidy would negatively affect the new president’s popularity. Indeed, the PDP tried to remove the subsidy in 2012, but had to back down after large-scale protests.
“In addition, we believe that Tinubu’s aim to raise oil production is unfeasible in the short term. Crude production has declined significantly to 1.1mn barrels per day in September – a multidecade low – due to rising oil theft and previous underinvestment. Given the country’s weak fiscal position, we believe that there will be limited room for more security and social spending to combat oil theft and attract more investment,” FItch said.
The organization further said that Tinubu’s chances of winning would probably be diminished if public worries about his health remained.
According to the article, Atiku may cause a divide in the opposition PDP’s support, hurting the party’s nominee. It said Obi’s popularity as a viable third-party candidate after the APC and PDP will be the cause of this.
Fitch says it “believe that Obi’s popularity will most likely split the opposition vote, at the expense of the PDP. The PDP’s candidate (Atiku Abubakar) is a northerner and we believe that the party’s only route to victory is expanding its vote in the South-West and North-Central states while retaining large majorities in the South-South and South-East.”