BusinessDay 22 Aug 2018

BUSINESS DAY
Opinion
BELL IHUA
Dr. Bell Ihua is a public opinion
polling expert and Chief Executive
Officer at NOIPolls. He writes from
Abuja.
It was Falz the bahd guy
who recently called out
critics for “shooting down
the messenger and missing
the message”, as he responded
to the backlash on
his “This is Nigeria” video.
Perhaps, this is new territory
for Falz, but not so for social
researchers and public opinion
pollsters. We are often
criticized for the results and
findings of our polls; more so,
by people who have neither
read the research report nor
understand the methodology
adopted in conducting the
poll, survey or research study.
The rise or fall of any piece of
research or public opinion
poll lies in its methodology. In
other words, what determines
whether anyone should give
a hoot about the findings of a
poll or what confers credibility
on any piece of research are
NEWS YOU CAN TRUST I WEDNESDAY 22 AUGUST 2018
Who is scared of public opinion polls?
in its ability to answer some
questions – how was the poll
conducted? How was primary
data collected? How were the
questions worded? How representative
is the data? What’s
the sample size of the poll?
And what’s the margin of error,
amongst other questions.
Public opinion polls are
an essential part of the politics,
democracy, markets and
social life in developed societies.
From political predictions
and approval ratings, to titles
of Hollywood movies and
song-of-the-week picks, polls
are tools used to measure and
gauge public opinion on issues
affecting the society. Let’s
take a step backward to define
“public opinion”; it simply
refers to the mind, thought
and expression of the general
population on a particular issue
or subject matter.
Is public opinion polling
new?
Certainly not, polling isn’t
new. It was Jacques Necker,
French statesman and Finance
Minister under King Louis XVI,
who in the 18th century, first
emphasized the importance
of L’opinion publique, as he
advocated for the publishing
of government accounts
and budgets in order to boost
public confidence in the years
preceding the French Revolution.
However, public opinion
polling was popularized in
America. It was George Gallup,
founder of the renowned Gallup
Poll and father of public
opinion polling, who in the
1930s concluded that there
was no difference between
polling on toothpaste and
politics. In recent times too,
pollsters like Stanley Greenberg,
have been hailed as
the father of modern polling
techniques and described as
a man who doesn’t just have
a finger on the people’s pulse,
but has an IV injected into it.
How useful are polls?
For governance to be effective,
it must be inclusive
and participatory. Opinion
polling is significant tool that
can enhance inclusiveness
and participation in governance.
In the United States for
instance, polling has become
an entrenched part of democracy,
as the need to understand
what the public think is
considered to be at the heart of
governance. This disposition
was aptly captured by Abraham
Lincoln, who was quoted
to have said “what I want to get
done is what the people desire
to have done, and the question
for me is how to find that out
exactly.” President Franklin
When we say a poll is
“scientific”, it simply
means the poll has been
conducted through a set
of rigorous processes and
quality control mechanism
to produce certain
results; and that those
processes can be replicated
to produce about
the same result, with
some level of confidence
and percentage of replicability
Roosevelt relied on pollsters
like Emil Hurja and Princeton
professor Hadley Cantrill to
shape strategies and public
policy; same with President JF
Kennedy. Likewise, President
Ronald Reagan’s White House
relied on polling support from
Dr. Richard Wirthlin; while
Presidents Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush relied heavily
on the polling gurus like
Jeremy Rosner, Justin Wallin
and Al Quinlan. Apart from
the United States, there’s evidence
to suggest that several
global leaders and members
of parliament (MPs) have in
the recent decades relied on
opinion research to help shape
public policyand reforms in
their countries–from Prime
Ministers Tony Blair and Julia
Gillard, to Presidents Nelson
Mandela, Mikheil Saakashvili,
and Viktor Yushchenkoto
mention a few.
Conducting scientific
polls
Beyond media vox-pop
and adhoc straw polls, which
involve people responding
to a set of questions without
reference to how respondents
are selected; there are certain
indicators that can make a
poll, survey or research study
scientific. When we say a poll
is “scientific”, it simply means
the poll has been conducted
through a set of rigorous processes
and quality control
mechanism to produce certain
results; and that those
processes can be replicated to
produce about the same result,
with some level of confidence
C002D5556
and percentage of replicability.
Several terminologies can be
associated with polling, such
as: Research population, Sampling
technique, Sample size,
Fielding and data collection,
CAPI and PAPI, Questionnaire
design, Question wording,
margin of error, randomization
and stratification amongst
others. These would normally
make up a full module in a
survey research course, or an
article for another day. My
intention isn’t to make readers
polling experts from this one
article; but to help demystify
the myth often associated with
public opinion polls in Nigeria,
and appreciate what makes
good versus bad polls. Consequently,
I would like to touch
on a few of those terminologies
that I consider fundamental to
public opinion polling.
Research population
All polls are based on samples
drawn from larger populations.The
purpose of every
opinion poll is to attempt to use
a sample to make inferences or
form conclusions on the larger
population. With a population
of between 180 and 200 million
Nigerians, is it possible to
access the entire population
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Remaking the university tradition: The town and gown model
TUNJI OLAOPA, PHD
Olaopa is Professor of Public
Administration,
Lead City University, Ibadan
tolaopa2003@gmail.com
tolaopa@isgpp.com.ng
The university is
one of the most
fundamental of all
institutions that a
state can leverage as the
turning point for its developmental
efforts. In fact,
the university is a key factor
in the emergence of any developmental
state worthy
of its onions. This is not
only because universities
represent the human capital
development citadel
that defines the contribution
of higher education to
national development, but
essentially also because
universities are the interface
any nation has to the
emerging knowledge society.
Permit me to outline
two quotes that speak to
my reflection about university
tradition. The first
quote is from Benjamin
Disraeli, the former British
prime minister: “A University
should be a place
of light, of liberty, and of
learning.” Let us call this
the idealist understanding
of the university as a place
of sublime thought where
professors and students
contemplate the forms
of good, of the beautiful
and the sublime. This is
an institution that assists
humans to cultivate noble
and cultured conduct
and attitude that goes into
the making of an urbane
intellectual. This was the
original design derived
from Plato’s Academy and
Aristotle’s Lyceum; a place
where people go to contemplate
the universe and
human existence.
However, and like other
human institutions, the
university has also been
subjected to several transformations
arising from
both the benign and tumultuous
social changes that
the human societies and
political communities have
witnessed over the centuries.
Universities have been
transformed from the con-
It is a measure of arrogance
that makes a
university thinks that it
has sufficient capacity to
impose its thoughts and
paradigms on the society
without a corresponding
collaboration with that
society. The town and
gown initiative ensures
that the university draws
on professional and
scholarly elements to
buttress its relevance
towards the society
templative Ivory Towers of
Plato, Aristotle and the medieval
period, to modern
institutions responding to
global capitalism and the
consumerist culture.The
university, in other words,
has now been brought into
serious conversation with
its multiple and often complex
environments. This is
how Alice Waters graphically
depicts the siting of
a particular university:
“I really appreciate the
many neighbourhoods of
Berkeley. There is still the
butcher, the baker and the
candlestick maker. And
it has the University of
California, which is the
greatest gift, to my mind,
to be close to it. It keeps
the place alive.” In this
instance, the University of
California is brought into
constant discourse with
its neighbourhood, in the
same way that most other
universities sited within
the cities are compelled to
dialogue with them.
The neighbourhood or
town imperative becomes
all the more accentuated
when we also factor into
the situation the context
of development for any
nation. The university in
Nigeria is conditioned by
the crisis of development
in Africa. It is within this
context of institutional
reform to regenerate structures
of development that
I have situated myself as
an administrative scholars
and reform advocate. It has
been obvious to me for a
long time that higher education
and the university
specifically, have fundamental
role to play in the
reform architecture of the
Nigerian state. It therefore
seemed the right aspiration
for me to desire to
return to the university at
some point in my career as
a public servant. That point
came in 2015 when I had to
retire from the civil service.
Retirement did not come
as a surprise as I had been
nursing the idea of setting
up a structure within which
administrative, intellectual
and professional ideas
about institutional reforms
could have a space for
synergy.
When the Ibadan
School of Government
and Public Policy (ISGPP)
came into existence, it
contained the germ of an
idea that seems to me to
be similar to what Alice
Waters meant when she
narrated the geographical
location of the University
of California. ISGPP is conceived
to be a center where
town and gown meets, engages
and collaborates on
the reform issues that will
enable the Nigerian state
to perform better than it
is presently doing for the
sake of democratic governance
and development.
This town and gown tradition
came to me easily. It is
one of the most enduring
lessons I learnt from the
bureaucratic leadership
acumen of Chief Simeon
Adebo, and the administrative
achievements of
the old Western Region as
an administrator/scholar.
It was immediately obvious
to Adebo that if he
must succeed as the head
of the civil service under
the political astuteness of
Chief Obafemi Awolowo,
he needed more than the
input of public servants
in the translation of policies
into concrete infrastructures
that benefit the
people. So, he leveraged
the contiguous presence of
Continues on page 36
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