By Odoh Diego Okenyodo
They say we talk too much and I am tempted to agree. Actually, I have fallen for the temptation long ago: We talk more than we act. Nigerians will convince you that all is possible; we paint glorious pictures of what is possible –we really can paint! This is evident in our art endeavours, from Nollywood, through our music and fashion. Our art brims with energy and vigour because of this simple visualisation skill of ours.
This accounts for my concerns about the volume of data we generate consciously or unconsciously and how they are being converted or not converted to something we can use as a people. Some skill is failing us here. “Nigeria now has 20 million out-of-school children – UNESCO”, screams the Premium Times on the first day of September last year, and The Punch joins the harmony on the 27th of November 2022 with “Nigeria maternal mortality rate too high – SOGON”.
The Punch quotes an expert who says, “Nigeria’s maternal mortality rate is still among the highest in the world, with an estimated 512 deaths per 100,000 live births, which is nowhere near the SDGs target of 70 per 100,000 live births.” (So the Sustainable Development Goals feel it is OK for 70 mothers to die after every 100,000 children are born! Diaris God o. I won’t say anything.)
But, join me in considering for a moment how much we have done to arrive at this point where 512 women die after 100,000 children are born. A report published by the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Pub Med Central said, “The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that about 58,000 maternal deaths occurred in Nigeria in 2015, and that the MMR declined from 1350 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 814 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015.” In 2015, the rate at which mothers die in Nigeria was second only to India’s. Almost eight years later, 512 women are dying in our country, while in India 97 women die. This is despite having four times more people than Nigeria.
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Where has this unique Nigerian ability to visualise things and tackle them head-on gone? We did it to music and we are still doing it, harvesting global awards, and Davido’s latest album is breaking streaming records. We did it to storytelling on rickety unprofessional cameras with abysmal electric power to ice the cake. We produce more movies than anyone else in the world, except the Indians (perhaps because of that famed talisman Indians used in playing football that caused FIFA to ban them, according to Nigerian urban folklore!).
We need to engage more with the data within our reach. Many of our data are ends in themselves. We roll them out, hit the headlines and revel in the amazing feat of having scored another ignominious record to make more unpatriotic Nigerians ‘japa’ from their country to North America or any other part of the world’s freezer. We release these things like hit singles by Asake, Davido or Ayra Starr. To use another instance, remember when the new single was Multidimensional Poverty and we released the thing last year to worldwide critical acclaim? We received rave reviews once again for nearly rivalling our colleague-in-dreary-data India which had an estimated 230 million people living in multidimensional poverty to be in the first place, while Nigeria had 133 million people. That is 63 per cent of our population that is poor, fa. And we are moving like everything is normal. There is a bullet lodged in the chest of this country.
What should be done with all the data we have is the subject of a forthcoming international conference I have the privilege of being an organiser of. The conference, with the theme, Change Management and Data-Driven Strategic Engagement for Development, is the 4th in the series of international conferences organised by the Institute of Strategic and Development Communication (ISDEVCOM) at the Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Nasarawa State, Nigeria. Under the convening power of the phenomenal Professor Emmanuel S. Dandaura, the organisers are worried about the lack of collective ire and urgency around all the things we have data to buttress are wrong. We have to engage different groups in our society with these data and create a sense of collective urgency about them. As you read this, I guess your mind is training toward a government agency. Confess… You think we should blame one government agency and fold our arms. No. What we desire is a collective responsibility for what is wrong with Nigeria, to galvanise us all toward acting to change the ugly situations. The concept of strategic engagement attempts to creatively rally different groups and sectors of society to achieve defined developmental results in ways that take care of our needs today and the needs of future generations. In Nigeria, strategic engagement should bring us to the realisation that the way we are living is not sustainable, and the data is there to show this.
Imagine that 3,121 Nigerians died from road accidents in 2021, but this number increased to 3,372 in 2022. Let’s concede that the roads are bad in many places, but what accounts for the many ugly road accidents in Abuja, Lagos and those urban areas with largely well-paved, macadamized thoroughfares (just like the character Bomber Billy would say in the play “Veronica My Daughter” by Ogali A. Ogali)? Witches? Wizards? Or “Village People”, who, in any case, have moved to cities due to rural-urban migration? We are quite nonchalant about basic maintenance of anything, be they cars, public and private houses, and our bodies.
This is why we need to start caring about data and engaging with them. I know many of you claim to be scared of mathematics, but this phobia never follows you into banking halls. I sense some selective phobia here. Anyway, come May 2 and 3, 2023, I look forward to the much-maligned talk at conferences, but this is one we are packaging to be different with intentions to have practical applications and innovations come out from. We have got actors from nongovernmental organisations, government and the private sector implicated in this, and you have a role to play in this too. Abeg, make I stop here before I write too much! See you next week.
