Nigerians have come to the end of the 2015 election season and can now breath a sigh of relief that it was a largely peaceful and orderly process,

The results have revealed a seismic shift in the balance of power following the resounding success of the opposition APC party, whose presidential flag bearer General Muhammadu Buhari won the election on his fourth attempt vying for the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The big losers have been the ruling PDP party but for most Nigerians this was not a surprising outcome.

For months and weeks leading up to the elections, various polls and online assessments from the Nigerian Media, Civil Society and people on the streets showed a significant shift towards and preference for the APC's Presidential Candidate.

Even an online poll run on twitter by the President's Aide returned the same results predicting that President Goodluck Jonathan would lose the elections to General Muhammadu Buhari.

However the PDP party and it's Ruling Government officials failed to take any notice of these polls which reflected the pulse and will of the Nigerian people.

Polls and Assessment data are taken very seriously in more developed countries as they provide valuable insights into emerging trends and outcomes.

Perhaps if the government had taken note of such sentiments and tried a different electioneering strategy the results may have been entirely different.

The PDP Party instead spent more time and resource trying to malign the character of the President-Elect which made Nigerians even more determined to vote out the PDP for their perceived arrogance and unruliness.

The outcome of the Governship elections have also followed a similar voting pattern to the Presidential elections with even more inroads being made by the APC to traditional PDP strongholds like Niger, Plateau and Benue. Again these outcomes were largely predicted by citizens being polled on traditional media, twitter and so on.

The result is that the PDP has now been relegated from a National Party to a Regional one with staunch support being provided from only the South South and South Eastern zones of the country.

The incoming government should take heed of public sentiment by using polled data to assess their standing in terms of performance as well as gaining valuable insight into the minds of the people. Polling data provide an effective means of self policing that can help the APC Government avoid the fatal mistakes made by PDP their predecessors, who failed to take any notice of the clear message being passed across by the Nigerian voting public.

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