CSO to launch social cohesion survey in Nigeria 

Africa Polling Institute (API), a not-for-profit organisation, says it will launch a nationwide survey to determine the level of social cohesion in the country.

Olugbenga Ogunmefun, API director of research, spoke on Wednesday at a one-day workshop aimed at promoting social inclusion in society.

Ogunmefun said the survey seeks to find out the impeding factors to social cohesion in the country.

He said the study, which is funded by the Ford Foundation, is the third cycle of the Nigeria Social Cohesion Project, which aims to broaden the breadth and focus of social cohesion in the country.

The goal of this research, according to him, is to quantify and track the degree of social cohesiveness in Nigeria and to provide useful recommendations for public policy formulation.

“From the findings of the last one, we found out that Nigeria is not socially cohesive, we are at about 43.53 percent and that is below average,” he said.

“Between last year and this year what has really changed, is Nigeria a better place, is Nigeria more socially cohesive than last year.

“These are the things we are going to find out, we cannot preempt what is going to happen and what the data findings will be.

“That is the essence of coming together and revisiting the survey instrument, revisiting the methodology and at the end of the exercise, we go out to the field and gather data.

“So that at the end of the whole exercise, the survey instrument will be an improvement if need be and be sustained from what we had last year.”

Segun Olajonrin, senior research manager of the institute, said the survey will be conducted in all the 36 states and the federal capital territory (FCT).

“What we mean by social cohesion is togetherness, are we together as a country, what makes us have some level of disparities between ourselves and what are the factors and indicators that have torn us apart over the years, that is exactly what we are looking at,” Olajonrin said.

“We are using 5,000 sample size because it was the same size that was used in 2019 and 2020/2021 and we want to maintain the same sample and the trend.

“As it stands right now, we want to embark on the field for data collection, and data collection usually takes like 4 weeks or a month to collect data.

“After that, the analysis will be done but the methodology we will be adopting is the quantitative approach.

“And it involves multi-stage stratified random sampling where the country will be stratified into their respective regions which is the six geo-political zones and further segregated into their states, senatorial districts and local governments areas.”

On his part, Hauwau Yusuf, API social cohesion research fellow, said gender equity promotes social cohesion in society.

“If we don’t mainstream gender into activities within the state or the nation, then social cohesion may be an illusion,” she said.

“It is very important that we mainstream gender into our activities, into policymaking, into decision-taking and ensure that women are allowed to participate, just as men are allowed to participate.”

Representatives of civil society organisations and government agencies attended the workshop.