President Tinubu hit the ground running with an inaugural speech that was filled with policy initiatives. In the four weeks that have followed the inauguration the administration has rolled out several high-profile actions including the retirement and selection of new service chiefs, appointment of a national security team, as well as the arrest of the EFCC chairman and the CBN Governor.
This poll marks the first of a series of monthly surveys that will comprehensively track the initiatives of the Tinubu administration and other tiers of government and provide the unadulterated views of the Nigerian public about those initiatives.
Demographic Information
The survey was targeted at Nigerians of voting age. We received over 1,400 responses, providing a margin of error of ±3% at a 95% confidence level. 67% of respondents indicated that they voted in the 2023 presidential elections. 46% indicated that they had no political party affiliations or interests. Respondents were drawn from across all six geopolitical zones, both in terms of their places of origin and their locations of residence.
45% Satisfaction rating for President Tinubu
Respondents were provided with a 5-scale question about their rating of President Tinubu’s first month in office (Figure 1). They were provided with an option of responses ranging from “Excellent”, “Good”, “Average” to “Poor” and “Very Poor”. Only one of these options could be selected. We defined “Satisfaction” as being the sum of responses with a clearly positive rating of the President’s performance, drawn from the following options - “Excellent”, “Good” and “Average”.
45% rated the performance of the presidents as satisfactory, with 15% of them rating his performance as “Excellent”, 15% rating it as “Good” and a further 15% rating it as “Average”.
Figure 1
Varied levels of Support for the Administration’s New Policies
Table 1
Respondents were asked to rate five (5) of the most recent policy initiatives of the Tinubu administration and were provided with a 5-scale range of response options (see Table 1). Respondents who selected the “Highly support” and “Support” scales were added up and interpreted as being supportive of the policy in question.
54% support Fuel subsidy removal: While 54% of respondents supported the fuel subsidy removal policy, 36% indicated that they did not support the policy. 4% of respondents indicated that they did not know enough about the policy initiative.
60% support reforms in the electricity sector: A clear majority of Nigerians (60%) indicated support for the administration’s electricity sector reforms. 24% of respondents indicated that they did not support the reforms initiative, while 9% indicated they did not know enough about the policy. The electricity sector reforms question had the highest number of respondents who expressed a lack of sufficient knowledge about any of the policy initiatives under review. The Tinubu government would be well served to develop a targeted program to enhance the awareness of the citizenry about the program.
52% have doubts about the new student loan policy: The least supported program is the student loan policy with just 32% of respondents indicating support and 52% expressing a clear lack of support for the policy. Only 7% of respondents indicated that they didn’t know enough about the policy, suggesting that the lack of support is not due to a lack of awareness.
60% support side – by – side circulation of old and new currencies: The monetary policy initiatives instituted by the Tinubu administration were popular. The decision to allow both old and new currencies to circulate side by side was supported by 60% of respondents. The naira redesign policy also had the lowest number of respondents (2%) indicating that the level of awareness about this policy and its impact was widespread.
60% support eliminating dual exchange rate: A clear majority also supported the decision of the government to remove the dual foreign exchange rate to allow a free float of the Naira in the forex markets (60%). 8% of respondents indicated that they were not well informed about the policy, while 20% expressed a lack of support for the policy.
Priorities – Nigerians select Security, Economic Growth and Electricity as their top 3 priorities
Table 2
Respondents were presented with a list of ten (10) national priorities drawn from the APC manifesto as well as policy pronouncements that have been made by the Tinubu Administration (Table 2).
The highest rated priority area was security (85.2%), followed by economic growth (84.1%), electricity (83.6%), unemployment (81.8%), and healthcare (80.7%). Corruption was ranked high by 77.4% of respondents, indicating that while it is not considered to be the top priority, this issue continues to be high on the agenda of majority of Nigerians.
Restructuring was ranked high by 63.6% of respondents. Housing was the least ranked high priority area, probably reflecting very low expectations in a sector that successive governments have failed to address.
Respondents were also allowed to provide their own list of priorities. The word cloud (see Figure 2) captures the sentiments expressed by respondents, with the size of words in the cloud, reflecting the number of times those issues were raised. Respondents listed areas such as education, agriculture, economic fallout from subsidy removal, boosting workers’ wages, and addressing the terrible state of the nation’s refineries as additional areas of concern they wanted addressed and prioritized.
Figure 2: Word cloud.
Mixed Views about the Economy
Table 3
We provided respondents with five statements expressing various views about the economy and they were required to select one of the options (Table 3). Three (3) of the views expressed positive sentiments, while 2 expressed negative sentiments about the economy and / or government’s plans to address it. Overall, 33% of respondents expressed positive sentiments about the economy, while 67.2% expressed negative sentiments about the economy.
The Tinubu government has a lot of work to do in signaling its intentions for economic growth and job provision to the Nigerian people.
Ranking Nigerian Institutions – The Presidency and Military Stand Tall
Table 4
This survey question was intended to determine the views of Nigerians about key national institutions (Table 4). Respondents were provided with ten (10) national institutions that included the Presidency, National Assembly, Military, Police, Judiciary, NNPC, CBN, EFCC and DSS. They were then provided with a 5-scale response set that included options ranging from “Very High”, “High” and “Average”, to “Low” and “Very Low”. Respondents were required to select one of these options for each institution.
We interpreted the sum of “Very High” and “High” ratings as being indicative of the level of respect that respondents had for the institutions that the ratings corresponded to. Using this interpretation, the three most respected Nigerian institutions are the Presidency (31.51%), Military (31.3%), and DSS (21.7%), while the bottom three are CBN (15.1%), EFCC (13.8%) and NNPC (11.1%).
The EFCC, CBN and NNPC clearly have a lot of work to do to regain the confidence of the Nigerian people.
Sector performance ranking: Petroleum, Power and Security Rank Supreme
Table 5
We ranked satisfaction with the performance of the administration across nine (9) sectors (see Table 5). We defined satisfaction as the addition of the scores on the “High” and “Medium” scale. The highest ranking by respondents was in the area of the “Availability of petroleum products”, with an overall satisfaction rating of 62%, followed by “Power” (48%) and “Security” (41.6%). Unsurprisingly, these areas have seen recent high profile moves by the Tinubu administration.
We recognize that it is early days yet and there can be justifiable concern that it is difficult to fully assess the impact of an administration’s programs when they are just in the process of rolling them out. We accept that such concerns are legitimate. We also believe that knowledge about the perceptions held by the citizenry on these programs that are intended to benefit them can provide effective feedback loops that enable listening governments to better tweak their policies for maximum effectiveness. We fully expect that there will be constant movement on these measures as the administration more comprehensively rolls out its plans.
72% Do not support the defunding of Tertiary Education
Figure 3
Respondents were asked for their views about the planned defunding of the tertiary education sector (Figure 3). A clear majority (72%) indicated a lack of support for any plans to stop or reduce the budgetary contributions that government makes to the tertiary educational sector. Although this is not yet a fully rolled out plan of the administration, government officials have already started to publicly float the idea about the potential defunding of the sector. It will be prudent for the government to take the high sensitivity that Nigerians have to educational funding into account as policies are developed for this sector.
94% support demand for higher minimum wage
Figure 4
The Tinubu government is currently undertaking negotiations with workers’ unions such as NLC, TUC and others for wage increases specifically driven by the end to the subsidy program. An overwhelming majority of respondents (94% ) expressed support for the demand by workers for higher wages (Figure 4). This was by far the largest level of response provided to any question that was posed to respondents. The Tinubu government will be well served to note the massive support that the demand for higher wages has amongst the Nigerian people.
Polling Methodology
GAIN’s monthly poll is intended to gauge public sentiment about key initiatives of Government. This month’s poll tracks the initiatives rolled out in the first 30 days of the Tinubu administration. It is our intention to continue to survey the performance of government at various levels on a regular pace.
We received 1,400 responses on an assumed population of 100 million eligible adult respondents, giving a margin of error of 3% at a 95% confidence level. All polling was administered via social media platforms, email and cell phones. We have demonstrated through prior polling research that these methods allow for accurate polling in Nigeria.
We believe that growth and development is enhanced in a fact based, data driven environment. Our polling insights are made available freely to citizens and governments.
Who we are.
Governance Advancement Initiative for Nigeria (GAIN) is committed to supporting the development of responsive and responsible governance in Nigeria. Our monthly governance polls are intended to provide the government with feedback on the impact of programs and initiatives, and enable the citizenry to have their say on the performance of those they have elected to govern them. Please send any inquiries or suggestions to [email protected].
Dr Malcolm Fabiyi