Emerging Market analysts predict victory for Buhari

Jonathan and Buhari: handing over the medal of victory

DaMina Advisors, a leading provider of risk advisory services for emerging markets registered in five countries, with a focus on Africa, has predicted a victory for the APC presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, in the 14 February 2015 presidential elections.

Using its VERITAS Frontier Markets Electoral Forecast Statistical Model, the firm predicted a close election, with an eventual victory for Buhari by 700,000 votes, with both candidates meeting the second constitutional requirement of getting at least 25% of the vote in 24 of the 36 states of the Federation.

The extent of voting possible in the North East is expected to play a key role in the outcome of the poll, with the firm citing a run-off as a possibility.

According to the report, Buhari’s victory will likely see him snatching the commercial capital, Lagos, away from the opposition as well as racking up double digit gains in the Muslim north and single digit gains in the south western ethnic Yoruba states.

“Jonathan is set to maintain his very high margins in the oil producing Niger Delta south-south region, his home region, as well as strong margins in the eastern pan-ethnic Igbo states. Jonathan will likely also hang on to some
religiously mixed middle-belt northern states adjoining the capital, Abuja. However abandoned by his political godfather, influential former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and beset by an active Boko Haram insurgency in the north eastern parts of the country that has sapped his middle class and female support even in many southern
Christian states, Jonathan is poised to likely receive a cold Valentine’s Day gift of ejection from the presidential palace at Aso Rock in Abuja. Jonathan’s defeat, if it happens, will be unprecedented in Nigeria’s political history.

“A Buhari win on the 14th followed by a strong showing by the opposition All
Progressives Congress (APC) party at the 28th February governorship races will see Nigeria edge closer and closer to a more normal bifurcated two-party system with the APC on the center-left and the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) on the center-right.

“While the complex and tortured histories of both parties is too long to recount here, essentially while the APC looks to the build a strong decentralized managed capitalist social democratic state, with a slight leftward PanAfrican tilt towards China-Russia; the PDP looks to continue its generally centralized, pro-Western neoliberal free market capitalist democratic state, with a more insular Pan Nigerian nationalist neo-colonial tilt.”