Guardian

Oge Funlola Modie is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NOI Polls Limited. She is the first woman to head Nigeria’s leading independent opinion polling and research organization.  NOI Polls Limited works in partnership with Gallup (USA) to spearhead opinion research in Nigeria and West Africa.

She joined NOI Polls Limited as the Chief Operating Officer in February 2012 and was appointed Managing Director and CEO by the Board of Directors in August 2012.  Prior to joining NOI Polls, Oge was the Fund Director (West Africa) for The Makeda Fund, a US$50million SME private equity startup fund focused on investing in women entrepreneurs across West Africa. The fund was run in partnership with Small Enterprises Assistance Fund (SEAF) based in Washington DC. As a fund director, she generated awareness on investing in women-owned/managed SMEs across West Africa.  Oge also provided technical assistance to such women-owned businesses, particularly those that support their journey by obtaining patient capital.

Over the past 13 years, she has developed a career in corporate finance, SME development and finance, and currently opinion research. Her corporate finance career started in 1999, at Alliance Consulting, a corporate finance boutique company that was a spinoff from Agusto & Co Limited, Nigeria’s first indigenous credit rating company. At Alliance Consulting, she managed multiple acquisition assignments valued at over US$20million, and worked with top level executives in the Nigerian and West African financial services sector. In 2003, she joined Heirs Alliance, a portfolio management company founded by Tony Elumelu, former Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, UBA Group.  At Heirs Alliance, she was responsible for managing all acquisition projects under the financial services sector within the group. She also led a team that successfully set up and operated the Heirs Insurance Company Limited now called UBA Insurance. After Heirs Alliance, she began a career in corporate venturing at Nextzon Business Services. Her major achievement there was the design and development of the Nextzon Business Incubator, a business assistance programme of the World Bank.

Even before her present position at NOI Polls Limited, she had set up and managed her own professional strategy consulting company, Alternativ Managers, a wealth management company with a focus on building capacity in Micro and Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). Alternativ Mangers has partnered with The Ford Foundation, The Nigeria SME Agency (SMEDAN), LEAP Africa and Fate Foundation to build capacity in SMEs and stakeholders in the sector.

She earned a Bachelor of Science with honors in Economics from University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN). She attended Cranfield School of Management where she was awarded a Master of Business Administration degree. She is a UK-certified project manager and writer.  She has contributed to a wide range of publications and was a pioneer member of the Policy and Research Group (PARG) in the Economics Department of UNN. She seats on the Board of NOI Polls Limited, KSF Microfinance Bank, Affirm Consulting, and Victorious Women.

In her spare time, she loves to listen to music, read comic books, as well as fiction novels crafted by African writers. She loves to volunteer for SME causes around the world and is an annual speaker at the Best Of the Best (BOB) TV expo held annually in Abuja Nigeria. She also lends her voice to women development programs around the globe.

Ms. Modie told Assistant Business Editor, MATHIAS OKWE, in Abuja that NOI Polls Limited today has become a data bank for public opinion matters in Nigeria as the only registered Polls company in the country that is surveying the pulse of Nigerians on topical issues and her plans to drive it to become the biggest brand in Africa in next five years.

Excerpts of the interview.

What was your attraction to NOI?

One interesting need was the fact that opinion matters. The mode of opinion research to be able to tell a story and to get involved in the decision making process. I found that very fascinating because that’s not very far from  what I have been used to. That was the first thing for me . I also found out that it can be a platform for change. This is like an indigenous company where a lot of data resides. And we don’t have that kind of data in Nigeria . a lot of what’s said about he economy or development in Nigeria is always keyed back to international organizations. So this  is also like a resort to local data where international organizations can pick up information  from this company. I think that was really  interesting for me to take an opportunity as so far I think its been quite interesting

How is your background and wealth of experience garnered  over the years in  reputable organizations you have worked before come to bear on this your new assignment as the MD/CEO of NOI Polls so as to make the Company a brand name and a point of international reference point?

Two things : Competency  and integrity. We work with a lot of information here  and  added information is vital in decision making for both the public service and private sector companies. Therefore , what I bring to bear here would be in terms of the integrity of information, ensuring that what is going out from ere can be depended on by decision makers. The second part of it is competency – ensuring that we have competent professionals to carry out these processes and duties. One key thing that I think is the underlining foundation is research  and that’s what this is all about. In corporate finance, you do a lot of market research, your computer analysis and all lot of things. Here we are doing opinion research based on what the public is saying, using that to create policies, create products and develop different things that can tie back to the populace or as you call it the  clientile.  So it’s the same set of principles underlying the two sets of businesses that makes it very easy, a transition for me. So I will just move ahead.

Can you let us into some of the opinion polls you have conducted in recent times and what impact you think they have made?

We have had some very interesting polls in recent times. I must just say that last years we were doing one polls every two months, but now, we are doing one poll every week. That’s a tremendous leap. That really has been very challenging in terms of funding. But at the same time we have found a perfect way of just remaining above waters. One of the very interesting ones I think we did was on Rape during the Indian Bus Rape incident. We wanted to find out what rape is like in Nigeria. It was vry interesting that at least three in ten Nigerians know a rape victim. That is 30 per cent of the adult population know of somebody that has been raped. If you multiply that , that’s another 30 per cent has been raped, female population per se in Nigeria has been raped and that’s very high. We also found out in that poll that a lot of people were still with the perception that it’s a way a woman dresses that makes her susceptible to rape, and that was a huge discovery. 78 per cent of Nigerians thought that rape cases get unreported because of the stigma. Another  interesting one we did was on hidden banking charges. A lot of Nigerians have been complaining, that is the banking populace that today is a N100 here, tomorrow N40 and if you do something N2000 so we did a poll on what Nigerians felt about this and 61 per cent felt they were being exploited by banks and were asking that there should be some kind of transparency. I know that the Central Bank of Nigeria {CBN} has been working real hard to get banks to be a bit more transparent in those charges. I know last month it announced a recovery of about N8.6 billion. These are the things that show that we are very much relevant in terms of our polls. Another interesting  poll was to mark the UN world Water Day. And we wanted to find out how many Nigerians have access to clean water. And 47 per cent say they do not have access to clean water. we wanted to know how many of them have  safe drinking water and if I can still remember correctly, 83 per cent source theirs privately. That means if we are taking that number, about 17 per cent that have access to safe drinking water. The remaining 83 per cent  sourced theirs privately. And the biggest chunk of that 83 per cent drink pure water. I think that was quite interesting because it threw up a lot of  arguments . we had the World Bank talk with us in deference to that result and actually said it was very precise. One thing I must say is that all the polls that we do, are always tie into what an international  organization has done or buttresses the fact that some sort of discoveries have been done before . so we have to buttress it by local knowledge. So those are few of the interesting polls: water; banking charges and what have you. We also do monthly governance polls where we measure power supply , that is perception of power supply, approval rating like you have for Obama and we also do approval rating for the current Administration in Nigeria

What informs your choice of topic for opinion poll?

We work in teams . we have a team of experts responsible for  sitting and sipping through topical issues. Now the whole reason the NOI Polls was founded was to be a barometer of public opinion. So at anytime anyone wants to understand how people feel about a topic, what you have to do is go to NOI polls.com and find out what people think about that topic.  We sit down and said for this particular public opinion , what’s buzzing in the news. We have a product we call what’s buzzing in the news. Every Monday we discuss that and e talk of the different things that have come out in the social media , in print and also understanding what is going on and the tempo of the country, then we pick a topic  and we have a specific design. We have several design experts here. They would now design an instrument which is to be administered without bias. We don’t pre-empt any of our respondent. We create an instrument that when you are answering there is typically no bias. Typically, it takes about four days  from start to finish. Then we release every Tuesday morning , what we call a press release

How has this your barometer been  perceived by the public that you measured in terms of acceptability?

People have actually been very willing to talk, because you know Nigerians want to voice their opinions  but there is really no platform for that . when I mean platform, I mean platform for a scientific presentation of those opinions . you get people who are excited and they enquire , how did you get my number, who are you , where are you calling from  and they go ahead and tell you, look, call me again when next you are doing another poll call me because I want to get involve because we need things like this because it helps us to voice our opinion. That’s exactly the kind of reception we get.  We are happy for the fact that when we ask those questions people want to engage in conversation, so because of our countdown to 2015 elections polls, we’ve opened up a panel. We’ve asked people if you are interested , we are going to have an interaction in an open house session on this journey to 2015 elections to come in and let us know how they fell. So a lot of people are receptive.

You undertake opinion polls on service delivery rating by some agencies of Government like water and power supply. How do these agencies react when you come up with the results of the polls , particularly the ones that are not too complimentary?

I must make a difference between  what an opinion polling is and an advocacy. So we are an opinion, independent and unbiased. Now what we do with our result, we have what we call a 360 media or press release. When we have these results we throw them out on those platforms. Then if we have access to any of the institutions we send it to the responsible officer and that’s where we stop., because we are what you call a data base. We send you information,  what you do with that information is left with that officer or the institution. Like I said, we are like a data bank, you  want to understand what people are thinking at a point in time, you just click on the NOI Polls. So we send these out and sometimes we see these reactions  and we cant really say we are the reason this has happen. But we know that certain things are being done because of the results that we send out. We do always make sure that some responsible officers get them. Sometimes we print a copy and say this is a complimentary copy and we think you should know what Nigerians think about this and we tell them that should you need us to come in and make a presentation, we would be glad to do so. So yes we do get across to the institutions.

Has any of these agencies complained or expressed anger over your work?

Yes they do stuff. I give you some particular examples. We did something on the Nigerian Football League last year. It was going through a lot of crises. so we wanted to compare the English Premier League to the Nigerian League and we got a perception survey which shows that Nigerians were not particularly interested in the League because of the quality of the game, that it wasn’t fantastic. So we sent it off to the sport Minister and just basically anybody that was interested. We got two feedbacks: one was from a FIFA Executive Member who had contacted another Nigerian  Football Scout and asked : have you read NOI Polls  Limited. Basically, why the FIFA Executive was talking about it was because we had listed the clubs that Nigerians watch and the Scout’ Club – Heartland FC of Owerri was not there, and was asking the Scout: are you sure you are shopping for better players in Nigeria? Because I think Nigerians do not like the Club. That’s one.  And a week after we released that poll result, the Nigerian football Premiership league was shut down. They only just  started  playing last week because there were also other problems in the league. Every year, we have  done governance polls on what Nigerians expect the President and his administration to do. Now, for three years running, the top three desires have been : to create jobs, tackle insecurity and tackle power. Now, take a close look at what the president is doing , you would see that that is what he is trying to do. He’s tackling unemployment; the power issue  and tackling insecurity because over the three years, we have been doing this with Gallup for 2010: 2012 and 2013. Every year, those three have been consistent on the top three that Nigerians want tackled. So we can tie a  very loose tie to what the Government is doing with regards to the outcome of our polls. Also for power we intend to monitor power supply. We’ve been doing it for a while. We want to put it out there to show what people want day and night. Sometimes you could always see that… last year we saw that in terms of load shedding. We do see this happen, but like I said there is a difference between polling and advocacy. But I think for us, we throw the information out there to civil societies, government and all sort of people who then take this information and create change. Our part is to provide the data

Some people have observed that the size of your sample population is somewhat small, for instance, the sample size for the access to water opinion poll was just a little above 1000. For a country of over 160 million people, do you see this as representative enough to represent the views and opinion of every adult person in Nigeria, age 18 and above?

We have a technical partner, Gallup Polls which is the world’s premier Polls organization, anywhere in the world that you go Gallup is recognizable. Gallup has been our partner since 2006 and has taught us their robust methodology in opinion polling.  I mean, you can only learn from the master and so we have adopted this robust methodology. Technically, the sort of methodology that we used that if you were to sample the whole Nigerians in the same way that we have done, a hundred times, 95 times out of the hundred, you would find out that the same result that we have is what you would get. That is how confident we are because of the scientific methodology that we deploy. Now Gallup is in a country where you have 350 million Americans, every day that they do a sample it’s the same method they adopt, a thousand; like we do. So I even think that in Nigeria we are doing a thousand for 160 million, we are even doing amazingly far beyond  what ordinarily and scientifically  than should be done. So  we are very confident that if any one picks the method that we have done and does 95 over a hundred times , they would get the true value, so 1000 population size is more than enough. For the adult population of Nigeria because we do from 18 and above

What Survey method is it that you use?

Gallup has taken us through a scientific method where a random sampling is undertaken. For this telephone interview that we do, we what we call the NOI Polls  Number Data base . in that data base we have hundreds and thousands of numbers . now, these numbers have been gotten from … we do a yearly national polls which is face to face, across Nigeria, we in conjunction with Gallup we do a field survey of what Nigerians think. These numbers are gathered in random process . now, sampling is done across the numbers. We cover the entire nation across the geopolitical zones right down to the States and  local councils . so what we typically have is a number base of  numbers right to every place in Nigeria  where you have a Telcoms service. Now what happen is that they are randomly sampled from the computers and picked and calls are made. Those calls are then taken to our data centre  where they are analyzed and brought out where all errors are removed and the results and now brought forward what is which we release to the public. This is the method through which we have gone with Gallup, the use of software and whatever you  so we have a number data base here for telephone polls and then face to face interviews and we have what they call e-mark that is used by the national bureau of statistic [NBS] for household counts.

Do you face some challenges in the conduct of your surveys?

We have not got challenges so far. What we have actually got are confirmations. For instance, for the water survey the world Bank even said our result has further confirmed their Report and when you read our reports you  tie it back  to what has been said before, and you hear the world Bank say at least this has confirmed what we have been saying. And  also that of the Water Aid which says the North does not have access to water as you could also see in our result. You could also see our result on the HIV \ malaria where it is proven that the south has more malaria, it is more prevalent than in the North and that the southerner tend to self medicate more than go to the hospital, probably because overtime we are getting malaria too much, what I have to do is go to a pharmacy and said give me anti-malaria  drug and that’s it. So all these tie back to what WHO reported, so it’s a confirmation. And  like I said, we want to be a local residual of data . people don’t have to say UNESCO says … they can  come and say NOI Polls has that data  and even much more than UNESCO would probably have. So we get confirmations.  And of course we get people that respond  and ask questions, for instance, we did something on Super Eagles, we wanted to find out if they will win in the last AFCON competition, and three in five Nigerians said they will win AFCON. But he had some responded and say no, they are not prepared  but they will win and so they were arguing and eventually they won. Of course it shows the optimistic nature of Nigeria. But we get one or too who write back to say we don’t agree on this  can you explain and we gladly do. But it is typically confirmations that we get in terms of what people say. We can also use Nollywood, we did a research on Nollywood. They marked 20 this year and part of what we did was to find out whether people would go to cinemas to watch Nollywood, and most of the people said no, we just buy the DVD and this ties it to what UNESCO says that most films that are made in Nigeria goes straight to DVD, they don’t go to cinemas . and when we were asking why don’t you go to cinemas and they said its expensive, a N1,500 when they can buy the DVD for N300. A lot of people quickly go DVD, that’s why we have high rate of piracy in Nigeria. And after that we hosted a group of Nollywood Editors and it was such a huge argument. And we had somebody writing from Netherlands who belong to that group saying this is the first local company that has come forward with information that buttresses  every other international information about Nollywood. It was very comforting for us to get that form of confirmation. I think that we create those such of conversations so that people would always say how did you do this , how did you do that. But at the end there is always some information out there that ties it to the discovery and makes it very tangible and relevant and of course its with integrity . we actually put these information out in the public. We have approached the NBS, more to obtain information, but we have been thinking that there is much we can do together , because we are a residual of public opinion , they have statistics , the two can come together and provide much deeper information. But like I said we have a website that has every information, we don’t hoard it, its all there. In fact NCC took our information on Telecoms . so if you were to look for  anything on NOI Polls on the NCC website, you will see it there . they put it there saying  quality of service delivery which was what we touched on. It was very poor according to the different operators. Its there in the public and you see where people will quote you  and we hope overtime we will collaborate especially like I keep saying for this part of the business- that is public opinion. Typically, what we try to do to fund this part of the business , we have products and services for public and private sector. For instance we have a consultancy services  and we have a knowledge management centre where we have capacity building , the people that want to learn about research we teach them and people that want to buy our publications : we have some on Niger Delta which the Yar’Adua Administration used as part of the Amnesty Programme for militants. We have been very involved. We create these things and all it takes is for the policies makers to say oh this exists , can I have it please. And so that’s what we are. We are just like a whole data man  that people pull out and use that information and if you want more we can do like a consultancy services for you and then raise money to continue doing this because all this comes out from our pocket.

Now  from whose pocket does this financing comes from?

What  we do like I said is business model. We have created business units because the opinion polling has a call centre. We need  to maintain our one a week polls . what we typically do is that we have about three other units : the Business club unit; the consultancy unit and the Knowledge management Centre . we have people who we ask to subscribe to services and that’s on the Business Club and they subscribe to these services and we do a range of services for them and they pay for. that’s  what we use to fund this . consultancy, we do quite a lot of work for the private sector. Be it institutions that ask us to do what we call a  baseline surveys  for what ever interventions be it monitoring and evaluation. They also pay for that and we use that for financing and then we sell our publications. Its not a lot of money , but we are now looking for sponsors, people who are interested in pushing  public opinion. That is people that will sponsor the public opinion part of the business . our  partners [ Gallup] do daily public opinion polls and we are doing weekly so we are like almost six days behind and I must say that the NOI polls is the only indigenous public Opinion Polling company in West Africa. Across Africa,, we are the second indigenous , every other polling organization is tied to IPSAs or some other else. We have one in Kenya and we have one here. And I think one just came up in Tunis  and they wrote to me saying can we come and learn how you do it . I don’t know them they just wrote to NOI and said please can you come and teach us how to do opinion polling in Tunisia. That’s what we are about and we want to keep creating this sort of change  or platform for opinion polling in Africa . that’s why what we do is very important and we don’t want to say we don’t have  money to do it. Part of the business that makes money is a lot of work  because I am always on the road trying to get more people to sign up. We are always going out there . we are now a staff of 25. We moved from five last year to 25 to be able to support this weekly polling . that’s how we raise money and we are looking for more. We are hoping we can get sponsors .  its quite thight I wish we could make more because we are pulling from three areas to support the one area, the public opinion polling  which is for the better good even though we are not earning from there. So we are hoping that we can get people that can support this public good along with us  institutions, civil society and even government  if they can give grant to what we do.  We still looking and we are hopeful that we will find.

How come we have only two polling companies in Africa?

The reason, one is knowledge. I think that in Africa e have been through so many dictatorships that  a lot of people don’t think that their voices count, so it doesn’t look viable quite to get that done, or to believe that if I say something it can get things change. So its more for the civilized society , that’s why I said its knowledge of the fact that information is democracy and that people need to let out information for change to be done. It is that disconnection that government is lacking because government actually need s that connection with people where their voices are heard through a scientific way . that’s one. Second is that its for better good.. when you want to start something for better good you need to sit back and ask yourself how can we make enough money to do this and how do I make money off it it doesn’t come like that . its how do we do the good first and from doing the good what can you reap from the good that you’ve done. In six years now, its just about now that we are starting  about to come off above waters , to say we are finding that way to be able to fund the business. It’s the knowledge of the people that there is a way to have your voice heard and the second one is that because its for better good the expense tends to kill the dream of really being able to consistently put people’s opinion out there. For me I think that’s the two things and I think we have been doing a really great job. We only need a little support from all those that are interested .

What’s your vision for the NOI Polls Company in the next five years?

To be the biggest public opinion institution in Africa we want to be big enough to cover countries in Africa . we want to move from Nigeria  to Ghana to Liberia . move from there to southern Africa and move up to North Africa . like I said a company from North Africa, Tunisia has written us to say we are the only polling company in this country, please teach us. And from Tanzania , someone has written to say we don’t have it in this country. Please teach us. Can we come and learn?  Right now, we have people say we want to come and do internship, so we must be doing something good.. if people across Africa are writing and we don’t know them , then we must be doing something fantastic. So five years from now, we want to be big.  We want to have partners across the globe NOI Polls \Tunisia , Kenya \NOI Polls  we want to be in Angola  and across Africa to be able to provide a platform for African to voice their opinion and to connect to their governments so that governance can get better , people can feel more appreciated in that way , that’s where we want to go.

What kind of consultancy services do you offer and what competences do you have to offer these services?

We do research and strategic consulting .the research covers market research and opinion research. Strategic research covers using the result of perception  survey to chart strategy for companies . it could be a private sector company or even policy makers . we have something there that we call policy advocate research. We did some work for NAMSE  on the MYTO tariff because their power rate went up too high . they now approached us to do a survey which we now put together a policy paper and what we call a fact sheet and they took that to NERC negotiation . right now MYTO 2 has been reduced for SMEs  simply because of that intervention . people need to know that the Government can listen to evidence –based research that’s the key . There  is no person that wont listen to it because , there is a reason that you give and also how it would affect you . and when they find that out, they will always change a policy. We have the best experts in what you call survey designers ; crack heads; we have people that understand analysis  and myself I have been a strategic consultant. So with corporate finance and strategy  you have to sit down and typically tell people how to run their businesses . all the 15 years I have been doing this. Our Director of Research is someone that is very sound in research technique and he was a lecturer in Strategy in Coventry University in the United Kingdom. We have people who are professionals  and I think for me these are some of the best people I have worked with in all my years and I am very confident of the kind of work we do here. Policy advocacy, we are actually getting a lawyer and she is staring on Monday and what means is that every work that we get , we have to look at the policy implication. We are building strength and we do have international partners that also support us like the DFID and others that like what we are doing.