The New Year poll report released by the NOIPolls on Wednesday in Abuja revealed that “it is not surprising that education topped the list this year given the series of challenges facing the sector”.
It noted that poor funding is one of the major reasons for the deterioration and challenges in the education sector, especially tertiary education, which has led to frequent strikes by academic and non-academic staff since the early 1990s.
The report said that Federal Government’s allocation to education in the last 10 years had been inadequate as only a total of N3.90 trillion or an average of 7.07 percent had so far been allocated to the sector out of a total budget of N55.19 trillion.
It recalled that a Demographic Health Survey (DHS) conducted by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and the Nigerian government revealed that the number of out-of-school children rose from 10.5 million in 2010 to 13.2 million in 2015 in Nigeria.
On security, 44 percent of Nigerians reported that they expect the government to improve on the issue of security in Nigeria as they believe it has not fared well in 2018.
The nation witnessed a drastic breakdown of internal security challenges in 2018 ranging from terror strikes in the North-East to herdsmen and farmers conflicts in the North-Central to militants operating in the South-South.
This crisis comes in several forms such as communal, religious, political and socio-economic with varying degree of casualties mostly civilians.
For instance, the tension between herdsmen and farming communities saw a dramatic escalation in the first quarter of 2018, especially the attacks that occurred in some local government areas in Benue, Plateau, Adamawa, Nasarawa and Taraba states, which involved the loss of lives and properties leaving many people displaced from their homes.
On power, the country’s power generation was at its peak of 7,000mw in August 2018. Despite reaching a peak of 7,000 megawatts (MW), it was still inadequate considering the country’s population hence, adequate electricity means that Nigerians will be empowered to work from the domestic level and the cottage industries, through the small-scale and medium industries to employment in the large-scale manufacturing complexes.
On the economy, 32 percent disclosed that they expect the government to focus its attention on all aspect of the country’s economy. This is not surprising considering that the Nigerian economy did not fare well in 2018.
It noted that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 1.81% (year-on-year) in real terms in the third quarter of 2018.
The key highlights from the New Year poll conducted in December 2018, concluded that the government should do its best to tackle and improve on these areas Nigerians believe did not fare well in 2018 as well as create an enabling environment for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to thrive so that industrial manufacturing companies in the country will operate at full capacity.