Welcome to the New Year!
Good to have you on our side in 2024. Your readership keeps us going, writing week after week, knowing someone finds this insightful and useful at the informative, interpretive, and investigative levels. We hope to meet you in person at one of our Dataphyte Member Events sometime this year. We’ll sure send you an invite here.
Last week, in the earlier edition, while remembering the event that shaped the 2023 year, we guessed we might have left out your favourite Dive.
We tossed the coin and it showed there’s a 50% chance 🥲 the Data Dive you found most impressive last year could show up in this concluding part of the 2023 recap.
Let’s see.
July
Gender took the spotlight in July.
The two Gender-inclined editions took the 2 top spots as the most-read among the 5 dives that month.
We had to separate the exact from the exaggerated in the UNDP 2023 Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI) Report and the UK Guardian’s mainstreaming of same. And we also checked how belief in God affected people’s biases against the female gender.
However, God, Guardian, and the Gender Agenda edged the sequel, God, Guardian, and the Gender Agenda (2), to take the first spot that month. Here’s the introduction:
“Nine out of 10 people are biased against women, says ‘alarming’ UN report.”😨
The Guardian headline conveyed the findings of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2023 Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI).
How can the world be livable if these many people have a bias against women? Or rather, how do women cope if these many people hold prejudiced views about them?
Granted the world is not an entirely pleasant place for many, it has been more unfair to women than men in many instances, for as long as homo sapiens walked the plains and heights of planet Earth.
All the same, how can these many people have a bias against women – 90 out of 100 people including women being biased against women?
So, what if this ‘alarming UN report’ was true?
It means that if I sat in the same room with former Presidents like Barack Obama, Muhammadu Buhari and 7 others, I would be among the 9 individuals who have a bias against women.
This means Mr Obama too would be among the gender-biased 9? Because President Buhari is very much not biased against women and girls.🤭
But before Obama and I are labelled as being biased against women, I’d rather take a keener look at the UN figures.
You had better come with me to know for yourself. You could be among the 9 usual suspects of gender bias among the 10 in every room in the world.”
August
August could be the best month for Dataphyte folks. We sang an ode to Ode, our beloved colleague, who finally found a deeper love in Nora than in analysing data and tracking trends.
Ode’s long awaited nuptials led us to probe the timing and terms of marriage in Ode to Ode: To Marry or To Merry.
Besides examining data on prevalence of child marriage in Africa, for adults, we find out that “Just as the younger men treasure their freedom and independence before 35, the older women finally begin to treasure their own freedom and independence after 40.”
But thoughts of marrying or merrying without marring young boys and girls’ lives became second place as soldiers sacked democracy in Niger on July 26. Niger Coup: After Burkina Faso, Before Sierra Leone then became the most read of the all 4 editions in August. Here’s the introduction:
“When soldiers in Burkina Faso sacked the government on January 23, 2022, we analysed the incidence of coups on the African continent in one of the most-read editions of Data Dives.
In the first section of the February 11, 2022 edition – France’s Unweaned Colonies, Facing Unsparing Cancers and Nigeria’s Unhappy Clinicians – we noted 7 things:
- The Greater the French presence in any African region, the higher the incidence of Coups there.
- There is more French presence in West Africa than in East, North, Southern, and Central Africa.
- West Africa alone (out of the 5 geographical regions) holds 57% of all successful coups in Africa.
- It is 53% likely that the military will attempt a coup in a former french colony in West Africa.
- Citizens of francophone West African countries see coups as an answer to France’s colonial menace in their land.
- The Possibility of Coups in Anglophone West Africa has drastically reduced.
- The trend of Falling Francophone Democracies is proportional to Rising Anglophone Autocracies.
19 months after the successful Burkina Faso Coup, The Nigerien army toed the line of their Burkinabe counterparts. They repeated the same excuse for toppling the government. Their citizens pointed the accusing finger in the same direction – France.
The results of the analysis then stand today. Here is what we wrote then:”
September
Of the 4 Data Dives in September, On Political Ambitions and the People’s Aspirations was the next most-read edition.
Another gender treat, Gusau, Guangzhou, and Global Gender Gaps in Education was the most-read edition. Here’s the introduction:
“On Friday morning, suspected terrorists attacked three female hostels at the Federal University Gusau, Zamfara State, Nigeria, abducting about 24 students. According to Premium Times, witnesses reported that the numbers could be more.
The police spokesperson, Yazeed Abubakar, confirmed the abduction but could not provide an accurate count of the abducted students.
Fortunately, soldiers from the 1 Brigade Nigerian Army in Gusau were able to rescue six of the abducted students. The attack began around 3 a.m. in the Sabon Gida area, where the terrorists fired shots and conducted house-to-house searches for the students.
During the operation, the terrorists also blocked the Gusau-Funtua highway, and additional militants were stationed near the university’s main gate.
The university’s host community, Sabon Gida, has been grappling with security challenges, leading to several instances of student abductions.
A previous report from Premium Times highlighted the university management’s dismissal of some students who had protested against the prevailing insecurity in the area.
Conflict and crisis rank among the top threats to the education of girls and women in Nigeria, widening the gender gap in education locally and globally.
Among other systemic barriers, events such as the raid in Gusau contribute to the poor rating of Nigeria globally in terms of the female-to-male ratio of students in its tertiary institutions.
Nigeria ranks 112th of 128 countries in the world in female to male ratio of students in tertiary institutions, with a female:male ratio of 72:100. This situates the country among the 17 worst female:male gender gap in tertiary education in the world.
The female to male ratio of students in secondary schools is higher, at 95:100, and Nigeria ranks better at 104th among 124 countries, 20 places from the lowest-ranked country.
Around the world, “there are three times as many attacks on girls’ schools than boys’ schools. When schools are ambushed, children run the risk of death or injury, infrastructure is destroyed, and education systems are weakened long-term. Without education, girls lack the skills they need to cope with the crisis and help rebuild their communities.
“An estimated 39 million girls and adolescent girls in countries affected by armed conflict or natural disasters lack access to quality education. Refugee girls are half as likely to be in school as refugee boys,” the Global Citizen reported.”
October
Reflections on a pre-election gender commentary, Tinubu’s Trail of Male-Male Tickets: An October Throwback came tops.