Jonathan’s approval rating falls to the worst in South-South

President Goodluck Jonathan’s performance rating fell five per cent in November after struggling for months to stay above the middle mark, with the South-South and North West geopolitical regions turning in the most damning verdict on the president’s performance, a monthly evaluation poll by NOI-Poll has shown.

The poll released Tuesday said the percentage of Nigerians that approved of the president’s performance declined to 50 per cent in November 2013, from October’s 55 per cent.

The score was Mr. Jonathan’s average in seven months during which the president stuttered at 44 per cent between May and June, climbed to 57 per cent in August before plunging to 49 per cent in September.

At 50 per cent for November, the NOIPolls estimates that respondents who gave the president pass mark in governance amount to about 43.7 million Nigerians, which is half of the nation’s adult population.

“This represents a 5-point decline in the proportion of Nigerians that approved of the President’s performance from October,” said NOIPolls, which partners with US-based Gallup Organisation to conduct periodic opinion polls on socio-economic and political issues in Nigeria.

The group said one of the questions required a random collection of 1,000 phone users to rate the performance of Mr. Jonathan in the past one month.

Only 25 per cent of the respondents said the administration performed well. A further 30 per cent said the government failed while 45 per cent said the administration performed averagely.

Based on geo-political zones, the worst verdict came from the President’s South-South and the North West regions. Only 26 per cent each of the two regions’ populations scored the president well. Mr. Jonathan is from Bayelsa, where he was a governor.

The rating for power was the lowest in 11 months, NOIPolls said.

The highest score came from the South East with 74 per cent of respondents approving of Mr. Jonathan’s effort.

The perception of Nigerians of the administration’s effort in providing electricity was also dismal.

Respondents were asked to rate availability of electricity in their neighbourhoods in November. Of the total evaluated, 58 per cent responded that the situation remained poor, while only 23 per cent said there was a bit of improvement.

Also, 16 per cent said the situation had deteriorated while only 3 per cent voted that there was significant improvement.

“A view across the geo-political zones revealed that the North-East (46 per cent) zone accounts for the largest proportion of respondents that say the power situation in Nigeria over the past one month “remains bad”, while the South-South zone (34 per cent) accounts for the largest proportion of respondents that experienced little improvement in the power situation over the past one month,” the group said.