Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari polled an average approval rating of 49.3 percent in his first term in office, according to NOI polls, a Nigerian public opinion firm.
The results revealed that the President’s rating was highest in his first year in office with an average of 63.9 percent, as the report remarked that the higher ratings of the first year could have been influenced by his high rating in September and October 2015 with 78 and 80 percent, respectively.
The ratings also revealed that the President polled an average of 44.8 percent in the second year of his administration, an indication of a slip from his administration’s first year performance.
For the third year the administration polled an average of 47.1 percent, bringing the average score to 41.3 percent.
It would be recalled that the NOI Polls has been conducting these polls on a monthly series to evaluate the performance of Nigeria’s sitting presidents since January 2013. This has continued through the assumption of office by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The agency said that Nigerians participated in appraising the performance of President Buhari on specific indicators using a Likert scale of 1 to 5, where 1 represents ‘Very Poor’ and 5 represents ‘Excellent’. Starting off with his three cardinal policy thrusts, the polls rated the president 36 percent on Security; 27 percent on Corruption; and 16 percent on the Economy.
Correspondingly, the President scored 37 percent on Agriculture and Food Security, 26 percent on Power, 25 percent on Healthcare, 24 percent on Education, 22 percent on Infrastructure, 15 percent on Job Creation, and 13 percent on Poverty Alleviation. Averagely, the President was rated poorly on all indicators analysed in his first term in office.
Specifically, the President on job creation recorded a poor average of 15 percent in his first term in office.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s unemployment rate increased from 18.8 percent in the third quarter of 2017 to 23.1 percent in the third quarter of 2018._
The rating agency further called on the government and other stakeholders to ensure that adequate job creation policies and social safety nets were mapped out and properly implemented to tackle unemployment and poverty in the country.
HARRISON EDEH, ABUJA
