NOI Polls to gauge public support for President Gooduck Jonathan’s performance on the job has given the president more than an average score with 6 in 10 Nigerians approving the job his is doing as president.
This is despite the feeling of disappointment in his leadership in some quarters.
NOI Polls however, said that almost 57 per cent of Nigerians approve of President Jonathan’s job performance in the month of August 2013 in its recent governance poll.
The score according to NOI Polls depicts a 4-Point increase in the job approval rating of the President from July (53%) to August (57%) and also marks the highest approval rating the President has scored since January 2013.
Furthermore, same as in July, the results indicated that 42% of Nigerians rated the performance of the current administration as average.
However, NOI said, there was a slight decline (2-point) in the proportion of Nigerians (36%) that had experienced some improvements in the power supply in August.
Despite this slight decline, the President’s approval rating continued to soar, particularly in the South-East (76%), North Central (70%) and South-South (66%) regions. These were the key findings from the Governance Snap Poll conducted in the week of August 26th 2013.
“The results presented are the eighth in the monthly series of governance polls conducted by NOI Polls to gauge the opinions and perceptions of Nigerians regarding three crucial elements – the approval rating of the president, the performance of the current administration, and the situation of power supply in the country.
“Respondents to the poll were asked three specific questions. Firstly, in order to gauge the approval rating of President Goodluck Jonathan over the past 1 month (August) respondents were asked: Do you approve or disapprove of the performance of President Jonathan in the past 1 month?:
The result from this question revealed that, overall, almost 6 in 10 Nigerians surveyed (57%: 14%+43%) approve of the President’s job performance over the past month, where 14% strongly approve and 43% approve.
“These figures clearly depict a 4-point increase in the proportion of Nigerians that approve of the President’s performance from July (53%) to August (57%); and emerged as the best rating so far in eight months.
Comparatively, a total of 19% of respondents indicated disapproval of the President’s performance, with 15% indicating they disapprove and 4% strongly disapprove, while, 24% of the respondents remained neutral in rating his performance as they neither approve nor disapprove.
NOI sought to measure the performance of the current administration, thus, respondents were asked: How would you rate the performance of this current administration in the past 1 month?
Overall, the majority (42%) are of the opinion that the current administration has performed averagely.
In addition, while a total of 35% indicated they performed well, where 8% said they’ve performed very well and 27% said they’ve performed well; 23% rated their performance as poor, with 4% percent saying they’ve performed very poorly and 19% saying they’ve performed poorly.
Furthermore, similar to the President’s approval rating, the 35% positive rating of the administration marks a 7-point increase from the 28% in July 2013.
Also, in order to evaluate the general situation of power in Nigeria within the past month, respondents were asked: How would you describe power in your area in the past 1 month?
Findings revealed that overall, 36% (5%+31%) of Nigerians experienced an improvement in the power situation over the past month, where 5% experienced very much improvement and 31% experienced little improvement.
In addition, (27%) of the respondents were of the opinion that “it remains bad”, 21% indicated that “there’s no difference at all”, while 16% of the respondents stated that the power situation “is very bad and has gone worse”.
The opinion poll was conducted on August 26th to 28th 2013. It involved telephone interviews of a random nationwide sample. 1,004 randomly selected phone-owning Nigerians aged 18 years and above, representing the six geopolitical zones in the country, were interviewed.
With a sample of this size, we can say with 95% confidence that the results obtained are statistically precise – within a range of plus or minus 3%.
NOI Polls Limited is Nigeria’s leading opinion polling and research organisation, which works in technical partnership with the Gallup Organisation (USA), to conduct periodic opinion polls and studies on various socio-economic and political issues in Nigeria. More information is available at www.noi-polls.com