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Beyond Supposition; How Does Nigeria Plan for Herself
By Oladoja M.O
If we are serious about national development, there is an uncomfortable truth that Nigeria must confront, and that’s on a reliable data system. It is fact, no country can consistently make intelligent decisions about people or nation it does not truly know.
Long before roads are constructed, hospitals equipped or security strategies deployed, every successful nation first invests its data structure. Might be far less visible but infinitely powerful, because data is not merely a collection of numbers; it is the infrastructure upon which effective governance is built.
One obvious issue, out of many, that Nigeria face even till today, is the continuous attempt to plan its future with fragmented records, incomplete registries and statistical estimates. While statistical modelling has its place, it was never designed to become a substitute for an accurate national database.
Yet, across health, education, security, agriculture and social protection, we have become overly dependent on assumptions and projections to answer questions that should already have precise answers.
It is a slap on our face as a nation that we still struggle to say with confidence how many we are, where we live, or how our population is distributed.
A huge development challenge that is.
Because how do you actually plan for a nation you barely know?
And this is why I think recent efforts by the Federal Government deserve recognition. The renewed attention to strengthening the National Identity Management framework, the Digital National Education Management Information System (NEMIS), the National Digital Alphanumeric Addressing System and other digital public infrastructure initiatives reflect an important shift in thinking.
They acknowledge what many have long argued, that governance in the twenty-first century must be built on credible, integrated and continuously updated data.
But these initiatives should be encouraged, sustained and, more importantly, connected into one coherent national data architecture rather than existing as isolated reforms.
The implications of weak data systems seen all around what the nation is today. As the Minister of Defence once observed, combating crime becomes significantly more difficult when there is no reliable identity trail linking individuals across institutions and locations.
A crime committed in one state should not become impossible to investigate simply because the suspect relocates to another. Our security agencies continue to make commendable sacrifices under difficult circumstances, but technology and integrated identity systems should reduce dependence on chance and replace guesswork with intelligence.
Modern policing begins with knowing who exists within the system.
The same challenge quietly undermines policymaking in other sectors. As a public health researcher, I have often wondered how genuinely evidence-driven many of our policies can be when the underlying national data remain sparse.
Too frequently, policies are informed by international estimates, periodic surveys or historical datasets that no longer reflect present realities. Organisations such as the World Health Organization provide invaluable technical support, but no international model can fully capture Nigeria’s local peculiarities.
I believe national policies deserve national evidence.
And that conviction informed pushed me to establish the Data 4 Health Policy Initiative, an effort aimed at promoting locally generated evidence for better health policy. Ironically, one of the earliest obstacles encountered was the complexity of obtaining ethical approval for low-risk, non-clinical research intended solely to generate useful public data.
Ethical oversight remains indispensable, yes, but there is room to simplify procedures for minimal-risk public interest research.
For a country like Nigeria with so much deficit, the system should not be built with so much bottlenecks that can discourage citizens and young researchers who are willing to contribute to national evidence generation.
Beyond individual research efforts, every government institution should become a producer of quality administrative data.
Local governments, primary healthcare centres, schools and civil registration offices should not merely provide services; they should continuously generate the intelligence needed to improve those services. Data generation should become part of governance itself, not an occasional exercise conducted only when external funding becomes available.
In the same vein of database and identification, imagine a Nigeria where every child born in a government health facility automatically receives a National Identification Number alongside birth registration, and from that point onward, education, immunisation, other public services builds upon that single verified identity throughout life, with death registration appropriately closing the record at life’s end.
Such a system would not only improve service delivery but also reveal important policy insights, for example, children registering for NIN when they are grown would immediately tell of births that occurred outside the formal health system, offering government valuable intelligence for improving maternal and child health programmes and expanding institutional coverage.
The conversation about data is not merely about conforming to new age and technology, it is ultimately about governance, accountability and national planning.
Evidence-based policymaking cannot remain a phrase repeated in conferences while our institutions continue to operate with incomplete information.
Nigeria possesses extraordinary human capital, energetic researchers and young professionals eager to contribute innovative solutions. Government should deliberately harness this resource by supporting responsible data generation, simplifying research processes where appropriate and accelerating the integration of national databases across sectors.
The returns would extend far beyond statistics; they would strengthen security, improve healthcare, refine educational planning, enhance social protection and make public expenditure more efficient.
The future will belong to nations that know themselves with precision.
Nigeria has begun taking encouraging steps in that direction, and those efforts deserve commendation, but the task before us now is to finish what we have started.
For until we can confidently count ourselves, connect our institutions and build policy upon evidence instead of approximation, our development will continue to rest on uncertain foundations.
In nation-building, good intentions matter, but good data matter even more.
Oladoja Mark Olamilekan (Oladoja M.O) writes from Abuja and can be reached at: [email protected]
