|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Result of polls conducted by NOIPolls has revealed that Nigerians have more trust in vigilante group than in the Nigeria Police.
Similarly, the polls result showed that 60 percent of Nigerians are unsatisfied with the way President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is handling the country’s economy.
Bell Ihua, chief executive officer, NOIPolls, disclosed this in Abuja while briefing journalists on the results of the NOIPolls 2017 national poll on governance and institutional performance. Ihua informed that “60 percent of those polled said they were unsatisfied with the president’s handling of the economy”.
He said the methodology for the 2017 National Poll involved face-to-face interviews, with a stratified random sampling technique conducted on Nigerian adults aged 18 years and above. The poll was conducted in all the 36 states of the country and the FCT.
“All 109 Senatorial Districts in the country were visited, and a total of 111 Local Government Areas (LGAs) were visited, by selecting 3 LGAs per Senatorial District – the headquarters of each Senatorial District (which is mainly urban or semi-urban), as well as two other Semi-Urban and Rural LGAs,” Ihua said.
“The poll was conducted in 5 languages – Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Pidgin and English; was conducted with a 95 percent confidence interval and a margin of error of ±2.38. The fieldwork for poll was conducted between the months of April and May 2017,” he said.
The poll, according to Ihua, also asked Nigerians to rate their level of trust for organisations involved in providing security.
“The results revealed that the Military topped the list of such organisations with 77 percent, followed by Vigilante Groups & Community Security with 64 percent. On the other hand, Nigeria Police was identified as the security institution with the least level of trust with only 35 percent.
“It is worth noting that Vigilante Groups & Community Security (66 percent), Private Security Contractors (52 percent), and Ethno-Regional Groups like the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) (48 percent) received higher levels of confidence from the general public compared to the Police (35 percent),” he said.
He said the poll also reaffirmed Malaria as the most prevalent health challenge facing Nigerians by a significant proportion of 81 percent; with 63 percent accessing malaria tablets, 30 percent taking injections, and 6 percent making use of native medicine to treat the ailment.
In addition to Malaria, other ailments identified include: Cough (4 percent), Cholera (3 percent) and Diarrhea (2 percent).
“Furthermore, on the effectiveness of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), 55 percent of Nigerians do not believe PHCN is an effective organisation; with 88 percent of the opinion that PHCN is a corrupt organisation.
“As a result, 45 percent of Nigerians say they use alternative sources of power to augment the poor supply of power to households; with 93 percent using petrol-powered generators and 4 percent using diesel-powered generators,” he said.
The poll also revealed that only 44 percent of Nigerians pay tax and 46 percent don’t pay taxes.
“On taxation, the poll reported that only 44 percent of Nigerians say they pay their taxes compared to 46 percent who say they do not pay taxes. And in line with this finding, only 36 percent believe that taxes are used to provide services and infrastructural development; while 47 percent are of the opinion that taxes are not used for the right purposes. A further 16 percent reported that they don’t know what taxes paid are being used for,” Ihua said.
Olumide Taiwo, a policy analyst, said Nigeria lacks data but the polls give policymakers the data and what to work on.
“What Nigeria lack is data. What we need to do is to bridge that gap and for the policymakers to be able to make use of the data generated by us,” said Christiana Ogbe, business head, corporate communications, NOIPolls.
LAIDE AKINBOADE-ORIERE, Abuja
