THE GUARDIAN, Tuesday, Friday, May 17, 2013
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INTERVIEW
‘Role of public opinion polling in development’ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 30 So we can tie a very loose tie to what the Government is doing with regards to the outcome of our polls. Also for power we intend to monitor power supply. We’ve been doing it for a while. We want to put it out there to show what people want day and night. Sometimes you could always see that… last year we saw that in terms of load shedding. We do see this happen, but like I said there is a difference between polling and advocacy. But I think for us, we throw the information out there to civil societies, government and all sort of people who then take this information and create change. Our part is to provide the data Some people have observed that the size of your sample population is somewhat small, for instance, the sample size for the access to water opinion poll was just a little above 1000. For a country of over 160 million people, do you see this as representative enough to represent the views and opinion of every adult person in Nigeria, age 18 and above? We have a technical partner, Gallup Polls which is the world’s premier Polls organization, anywhere in the world that you go Gallup is recognizable. Gallup has been our partner since 2006 and has taught us their robust methodology in opinion polling. I mean, you can only learn from the master and so we have adopted this robust methodology. Technically, the sort of methodology that we used that if you were to sample the whole Nigerians in the same way that we have done, a hundred times, 95 times out of the hundred, you would find out that the same result that we have is what you would get. That is how confident we are because of the scientific methodology that we deploy. Now Gallup is in a country where you have 350 million Americans, every day that they do a sample it’s the same method they adopt, a thousand; like we do. So I even think that in Nigeria we are doing a thousand for 160 million, we are even doing amazingly far beyond what ordinarily and scientifically than should be done. So we are very confident that if any one picks the method that we have done and does 95 over a hundred times , they would get the true value, so 1000 population size is more than enough. For the adult population of Nigeria because we do from 18 and above What Survey method is it that you use? Gallup has taken us through a scientific method where a random sampling is undertaken. For this telephone interview that we do, we what we call the NOI Polls Number Data base . in that data base we have hundreds and thousands of numbers . now, these numbers have been gotten from … we do a yearly national polls which is face to face, across Nigeria, we in conjunction with Gallup we do a field survey of what Nigerians think. These numbers are gathered in random process . now, sampling is done across the numbers. We cover the entire nation across the geopolitical zones right down to the States and local councils . so what we typically have is a number base of numbers right to every place in Nigeria where you have a Telcoms service. Now what happen is that they are randomly sampled from the computers and picked and calls are made. Those calls are then taken to our data centre where they are analyzed and brought out where all errors are removed and the results and now brought forward what is which we release to the public. This is the method through which we have gone with Gallup, the use of software and whatever you so we have a number data base here for telephone polls and then face to face interviews and we have what they call e-mark that is used by the national bureau of statistic [NBS] for household counts. Do you face some challenges in the conduct of your surveys? We have not got challenges so far. What we have actually got are confirmations. For instance, for the water survey the world Bank even said our result has further confirmed their Report and when you read our reports you tie it back to what has been said before, and you hear the world Bank say at least this has confirmed what we have been saying. And also that of the Water Aid which says the North does not have access to water as you could also see in our result. You could also see our result on the HIV \ malaria where it is proven that the south has more malaria, it is more prevalent than in the North and that the southerner tend to self medicate more than go to the hospital, probably because overtime we are getting malaria too much, what I have to do is go to a pharmacy and said give me anti-malaria drug and that’s it. So all these tie back to what WHO reported, so it’s a confirmation. And like I said, we want to be a local residual of data . people don’t have to say UNESCO says … they can come and say NOI Polls has that data and even much more than UNESCO would probably have. So we get confirmations. And of course we get people that respond and ask questions, for instance, we did something on Super Eagles, we wanted to find out if they will win in the last AFCON competition, and three in five Nigerians said they will win AFCON. But he had some responded and say no, they are not prepared but they will win and so they were arguing and eventually they won. Of course it shows the optimistic nature of Nigeria. But we get one or too who write back to say we don’t agree on this can you explain and we gladly do. But it is typically confirmations that we get in terms of what people say. We can also use Nollywood, we did a research on Nollywood. They marked 20 this year and part of what we did was to find out whether people would go to cinemas to watch Nollywood, and most of the people said no, we just buy the DVD and this ties it to what UNESCO says that most films that are made in Nigeria goes straight to DVD, they don’t go to cinemas . and when we were asking why don’t you go to cinemas and they said its expensive, a N1,500
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when they can buy the DVD for N300. A lot of people quickly go DVD, that’s why we have high rate of piracy in Nigeria. And after that we hosted a group of Nollywood Editors and it was such a huge argument. And we had somebody writing from Netherlands who belong to that group saying this is the first local company that has come forward with information that buttresses every other international information about Nollywood. It was very comforting for us to get that form of confirmation. I think that we create those such of conversations so that people would always say how did you do this , how did you do that. But at the end there is always some information out there that ties it to the discovery and makes it very tangible and relevant and of course its with integrity . we actually put these information out in the public. We have approached the NBS, more to obtain information, but we have been thinking that there is much we can do together , because we are a residual of public opinion , they have statistics , the two can come together and provide much deeper information. But like I said we have a website that has every information, we don’t hoard it, its all there. In fact NCC took our information on Telecoms . so if you were to look for anything on NOI Polls on the NCC website, you will see it there . they put it there saying quality of service delivery which was what we touched on. It was very poor according to the different operators. Its there in the public and you see where people will quote you and we hope overtime we will collaborate especially like I keep saying for this part of the business- that is public opinion. Typically, what we try to do to fund this part of the business , we have products and services for public and private sector. For instance we have a consultancy services and we have a knowledge management centre where we have capacity building , the people that want to learn about research we teach them and people that want to buy our publications : we have some on Niger Delta which the Yar’Adua Administration used as part of the Amnesty Programme for militants. We have been very involved. We create these things and all it takes is for the policies makers to say oh this exists , can I have it please. And so that’s what we are. We are just like a whole data man that people pull out and use that information and if you want more we can do like a consultancy services for you and then raise money to continue doing this because all this comes out from our pocket. Now from whose pocket does this financing comes from? What we do like I said is business model. We have created business units because the opinion polling has a call centre. We need to maintain our one a week polls . what we typically do is that we have about three other units : the Business club unit; the consultancy unit and the Knowledge management Centre . we have people who we ask to subscribe to services and that’s on the Business Club and they subscribe to these services and we do a range of services for them and they pay for. that’s what we use to fund this . consultancy, we do quite a lot of work for the private sector. Be it institutions that ask us to do what we call a baseline surveys for what ever interventions be it monitoring and evaluation. They also pay for that and we use that for financing and then we sell our publications. Its not a lot of money , but we are now looking for sponsors, people who are interested in pushing public opinion. That is people that will sponsor the public opinion part of the business . our partners [ Gallup] do daily public opinion polls and we are doing weekly so we are like almost six days behind and I must say that the NOI polls is the only indigenous public Opinion Polling company in West Africa. Across Africa,, we are the second indigenous , every other polling organization is tied to IPSAs or some other else. We have one in
Kenya and we have one here. And I think one just came up in Tunis and they wrote to me saying can we come and learn how you do it . I don’t know them they just wrote to NOI and said please can you come and teach us how to do opinion polling in Tunisia. That’s what we are about and we want to keep creating this sort of change or platform for opinion polling in Africa . that’s why what we do is very important and we don’t want to say we don’t have money to do it. Part of the business that makes money is a lot of work because I am always on the road trying to get more people to sign up. We are always going out there . we are now a staff of 25. We moved from five last year to 25 to be able to support this weekly polling . that’s how we raise money and we are looking for more. We are hoping we can get sponsors . its quite thight I wish we could make more because we are pulling from three areas to support the one area, the public opinion polling which is for the better good even though we are not earning from there. So we are hoping that we can get people that can support this public good along with us institutions, civil society and even government if they can give grant to what we do. We still looking and we are hopeful that we will find. How come we have only two polling companies in Africa? The reason, one is knowledge. I think that in Africa e have been through so many dictatorships that a lot of people don’t think that their voices count, so it doesn’t look viable quite to get that done, or to believe that if I say something it can get things change. So its more for the civilized society , that’s why I said its knowledge of the fact that information is democracy and that people need to let out information for change to be done. It is that disconnection that government is lacking because government actually need s that connection with people where their voices are heard through a scientific way . that’s one. Second is that its for better good.. when you want to start something for better good you need to sit back and ask yourself how can we make enough money to do this and how do I make money off it it doesn’t come like that . its how do we do the good first and from doing the good what can you reap from the good that you’ve done. In six years now, its just about now that we are starting about to come off above waters , to say we are finding that way to be able to fund the business. It’s the knowledge of the people that there is a way to have your voice heard and the second one is that because its for better good the expense tends to kill the dream of really being able to consistently put people’s opinion out there. For me I think that’s the two things and I think we have been doing a really great job. We only need a little support from all those that are interested . What’s your vision for the NOI Polls Company in the next five years? To be the biggest public opinion institution in Africa we want to be big enough to cover countries in Africa . we want to move from Nigeria to Ghana to Liberia . move from there to southern Africa and move up to North Africa . like I said a company from North Africa, Tunisia has written us to say we are the only polling company in this country, please teach us. And from Tanzania , someone has written to say we don’t have it in this country. Please teach us. Can we come and learn? Right now, we have people say we want to come and do internship, so we must be doing something good.. if people across Africa are writing and we don’t know them , then we must be doing something fantastic. So five years from now, we want to be big. We want to have partners across the globe NOI Polls \Tunisia , Kenya \NOI Polls we want to be in Angola and across Africa to be able to provide a platform for African to voice their opinion and to connect to their governments so that governance can get better , people can feel more appreciated in that way , that’s where we want to go. What kind of consultancy services do you offer and what competences do you have to offer these services? We do research and strategic consulting .the research covers market research and opinion research. Strategic research covers using the result of perception survey to chart strategy for companies . it could be a private sector company or even policy makers . we have something there that we call policy advocate research. We did some work for NAMSE on the MYTO tariff because their power rate went up too high . they now approached us to do a survey which we now put together a policy paper and what we call a fact sheet and they took that to NERC negotiation . right now MYTO 2 has been reduced for SMEs simply because of that intervention . people need to know that the Government can listen to evidence –based research that’s the key . There is no person that wont listen to it because , there is a reason that you give and also how it would affect you . and when they find that out, they will always change a policy. We have the best experts in what you call survey designers ; crack heads; we have people that understand analysis and myself I have been a strategic consultant. So with corporate finance and strategy you have to sit down and typically tell people how to run their businesses . all the 15 years I have been doing this. Our Director of Research is someone that is very sound in research technique and he was a lecturer in Strategy in Coventry University in the United Kingdom. We have people who are professionals and I think for me these are some of the best people I have worked with in all my years and I am very confident of the kind of work we do here. Policy advocacy, we are actually getting a lawyer and she is staring on Monday and what means is that every work that we get , we have to look at the policy implication. We are building strength and we do have international partners that also support us like the DFID and others that like what we are doing.