Last week, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) released the report of its opinion poll. The opinion poll termed “Buharimeter Opinion Poll”, assessed the opinions of Nigerians as regards the 3-year Buhari Administration.
WHAT EXACTLY IS BUHARIMETER?
Buharimeter is an independent monitoring tool, developed by CDD, that enables Nigerians, scholars and political analysts around the globe to evaluate the implementation of the campaign promises of President Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Like other election pledge monitoring initiatives around the globe (such as Obameter, Mackymeter and Morsimeter), Buharimeter evolved out of the need to monitor the actions of elected government officials based on their campaign promises.
HOW WAS THE POLL CONDUCTED?
In May 2018, CDD carried out telephone interviews for 4,000 respondents across the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory. Interviews were conducted in five major Nigerian languages: English, Pidgin English, Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. During the opinion poll, survey quotes were assigned, and it was ensured that every state was proportionally represented in the sample.
Post-stratification gender and state weights were constructed and applied to the data to make it more representative of the population, to allow for more accurate population totals of estimates and to reduce non-response bias. The weights assigned were in proportion to the 2006 Nigerian population figures. The ages of the interviewed Nigerians were between 18 and 60+ years belonging to different social class, literacy and income levels.
Usually, CDD conducts a daily monitoring of Buhari’s achievements and promises on print and electronic media, after which an expert analysis on sectoral issues are undertaken. Data is also obtained from multiple sources which form the building blocks for the monthly reports. And so, this opinion poll was conducted with a similar rigorous methodology and with a careful consideration for precision. Before the fielding of the opinion poll, a pilot poll was conducted of 30 completed interviews across the survey states to test the completeness and appropriateness of the survey tool. The margin of error does not exceed plus or minus 3 percent at the mid-range with a confidence level of 95 percent.
NIGERIANS RATE PRESIDENT BUHARI BELOW AVERAGE
The 2018 Buharimeter poll revealed that 40 percent of Nigerians approve of the President’s performance while 44 percent disapprove while the remaining 16 percent neither approve nor disapprove of his performance. This implies that the President is rated below average by Nigerians. The President’s approval rating of 40 percent marks a decline of 17 percent from 57 percent rating recorded in the 2017 Buharimeter National Survey.
ON ECONOMY
The poll also revealed that the Federal Government received ratings below average on the three cardinal campaign promises – Corruption, Security and Economy. When Nigerians were asked to rate Buhari’s performance as regards the national economy, 67% of respondents rated it poorly while 21% and 12% rated it as fair and good respectively. Compared to the 2017 National survey, 39% of respondents rated economic performance as poor. This is notwithstanding the country’s economic recovery arising from the increase in her Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a decrease in inflationary rate.
When asked about the economic performance of the incumbent administration by geopolitical zone dimension, the sampled population rated the economic performance of Buhari as poor in the North-Central, South-South, South-West and South-East with a percentage of 71%, 82%, 80% and 85% respectively. In the North East and the North West, the economic performance of the Buhari administration was rated poor at 47% and 48% respectively. These ratings continue to follow the geopolitical divide as witnessed in previous Buharimeter polls.
ON CORRUPTION
According to the survey, 57% of sampled Nigerians rated the President’s performance as poor in the fight against corruption. This represents a 10% increase from the 2017 poll where 47% of Nigerians expressed dissatisfaction. Proportionally, the South-East (84%) has a more significant share of its population rating the President’s anti-corruption war as poor; followed by South-South (75%), South-West (73%) and North-Central (61%). Only 34% and 30% of the sampled population from North-East and North-West respectively rated the incumbent administration’s performance in the fight against corruption as good.
ON SECURITY
Regarding security, the poll revealed that only 21% of sampled Nigerians rated the government’s performance as good while 24% and 55% rated it as fair and poor respectively.
In comparison, Economy received the lowest average score of 1.99, followed by Corruption with 2.24; Security had the highest average rating of 2.33 out of 5 of all the three cardinal campaign promises of the administration. It is important to point out that the closer the average score is to 5 the better the score.
Although the effectiveness of President Buhari’s administration was also rated poorly across six sectors including Electricity, Education, Housing, Oil and Gas, Transportation and Health, Buhari’s administration effectiveness on the agricultural sector was rated fairly; recording the highest average score at 2.65.
