89% of Nigerians believe job creation has not improved in 2018 – Noipolls

About 89 percent of Nigerians believes that job creation has not improved in 2018, according to a recent released public opinion survey about 2018 in review by Noipolls.

The report, conducted by NOI Limited, Nigeria’s leading public opinion polling and research organisation, was carried out in the week of December 10, 2018. And it involved telephone interviews of a random nationwide sample. 1,000 randomly selected phone-owning Nigerians aged 18 years and above, representing the six geopolitical zones in the country, were interviewed.

The report stated, “Respondents’ opinions were assessed on how Nigeria has fared in 2018 on eight specific areas and the poll revealed that 89 percent of Nigerians reported that job creation has not improved in the year.

“This is followed by respondents (65%) who indicated that the country has not fared well in term of infrastructural development, which is key to industrial and economic growth of any nation.

“On the economy, 63 percent of respondents stated that the nation has not fared well in this area despite the marginal increase in the county’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in first quarter of 2018 as reported by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Other areas Nigerians believed have not improved in 2018 were electricity supply (52%), security (51%) and Healthcare (51%). On the other hand, 69 percent of Nigerians admitted that the country has fared well in the area of agriculture in 2018,” the report further stated

The 89 percent of Nigerians that believe that job creation has not improved corresponds with the latest National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) labour report, which shows that unemployment rates rose to 23.1 percent in the third quarter of 2018 from 18.8 percent in the same corresponding period of 2017.

Johnson Chukwu, CEO, Cowry Asset Management Limited, said, “Our misery index has increased further so Nigerians are actually going very difficult economic times. No wonder we have seen a lot of social issues in country like suicides, increased level of crimes in the regions is not associated to crimes. This should be a wakeup call for the government.”

Noipolls conducted the poll to gauge the perceptions of Nigerians on how the nation has fared in 2018, focusing on some key socioeconomic areas.

NOI advises that the government and concerned stakeholders must synergise to address these critical challenges as another year approaches.

“For instance, fixing these infrastructural challenges will attract more foreign direct investments, create millions of jobs, help to create new markets, foster competition, spur innovation, lower prices, raise productivity and in turn leads to increase in standard of living. Due to the high cost of infrastructural development, it is advisable that a public private partnership should be adopted to make needed funds available to tackle these challenges,” the report advised