Remembering 2023, Month by Month

What a blessing to witness the end of such a terrifying, sorry, terrific year.

So good to be writing with the feeling there’s one lady and gentleman out there reading their 54th edition of Dataphyte’s weekly Data Dive this year.

Hmm. Not exactly. 

For those reading this in the Diaspora, it may be the first edition of the New Year. 

If you’re reading this at home in Nigeria by 1.00 pm December 31, 2023, another reader in New Zealand is already in the New Year 2024. 

Anyway, for readers at home in Nigeria, let’s make-believe we’re all still in 2023 now.

We opened up to you at the beginning of the year that “Through the carefully crafted narrative, the variegated chart, and our varied art forms, we desire that, together, we can make sense of mined facts for informed perspectives and measured decisions throughout the year 2023.”

Why Data Dives?

“We know hundreds of news break within a week and different follow-up opinions are written. Yet, the Data that should Define your next, informed Decisions are rarely spotted. So we Dive into the Social, Political and Economic Data from the daily events and reports and pull out the trends and tides to Drive your next smart move.”

That’s why we set out early to set you up for “deep dives into the obvious and the veiled politico-economic issues of the year.” Do you think we succeeded at that?

Today, we’ll attempt to recap the best read Data Dives month by month. We feature 2 for each month – the most read and the next most read.

Here’s to reminiscences of the 12 months gone by.

January

Of the 5 Data Dives published in January, the second most read is 22 Alphameric Data Points that Defined Nigeria in 2022 (Part 2). Coincidentally, this was the second edition of a like recap of issues in the outgone year.

The most read is 3 Costly Queues this Weekend: Old Queues, New Queuers, and the Naira Queries. Here’s the introduction:

“The average Nigerian will find herself/himself in one or more of three queues this weekend.

This January, the first month of the last year of Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, the people find themselves in 3 separate but simultaneous existential queues.

The old queue, the perennial one, is the long wait for people to buy petrol in filling stations.

There are anti-queue quickies, though, at the end of every mile – guys who offer fuel in jerricans without delay for those who can pay between N350 and N450 per litre. 

The new queue, the present one, is the lost hours of viable women and men who want to receive their Permanent Voters Card (PVC) for the February 25, 2023 general elections. The deadline for collection is tomorrow, January 29, 2023.

There’s great enthusiasm to vote this time, especially among the young and middle-aged, who together represent over 92% of the 9.5 million newly registered voters.

The Naira queue, the perplexing one, is the one forced on people who are neither ready to queue for fuel nor ready to queue for PVCs. They are forced to deposit all the 3 highest denominations of the old currencies in their possession in the bank in 2 days’ time, January 30, 2023.

According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the N200, N500, and N1000 notes cease to be legal tender by January 31, 2023.

This measure is the high point of the CBN’s demonetisation policy in the bid to retrieve cash stored out of bank vaults towards achieving the cashless economy policy. But there are complaints about the little time (3 months) given and the scarcity of the new notes, among other concerns.

There are several reports that those ready to deposit the old currencies do not have the new notes to spend. Thus, there are 2 sub-queues here: the queue to get new notes to spend and the queue to deposit the old notes.”

February

Of the 4 Data Dives published in February, the second most read edition was President Atiku: Muslim Grade, Middle Ground. Remember, this was the election month.

The most read in February is President Tinubu: Predilections and Predictions. It’s also the most-read Data Dive in the year 2023. Here’s the Introduction:

“The heat is on!

D-day is 14 days away!

Who will win the presidential race the coming Saturday?

I don’t have a guess. So we went ground-truthing stats, state by state. We found the current scenario to be similar to that in the 2015 elections. We obtained and analysed past voting patterns, voter turnouts, voter choice homogeneity, the religious homogeneity index, and so on.

In short, by deploying reliable statistical estimators, we measured the people’s voting predilections and came to the conclusion that Tinubu would win the popular votes and would be the only candidate to satisfy the spread criteria of a minimum of 25% votes in ⅔ of the 36 states (We’ll discuss the methodology in detail later).

This prediction cancels out the oft-speculated possibility of having ties at the first instance of the election on February 25, which would then occasion a rerun to determine the winner.

The race is so close and uncertain that people are beginning to wonder, “Would there be a clear winner come February 25, 2023, or would there be a rerun?”

The reason is that Nigeria’s political landscape underwent a seismic shift for good with the emergence of Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) in the race.”

March

Of the 5 Data Dives published in March, the second most read edition is On Legitimacy and Legacy: Tinubu’s Head and Troubles Ahead. Of course, this came at a time when many were not sure the President-Elect would be sworn in.

However, the most read edition in March is President-elect Tinubu: Glimpses, Glitches, and Glints (Initial Glimpses, INEC’s Glitches, and Individual Glints). Here’s the Introduction:

“Historical data of sentiments and behavioural pattern is closest for predictions!”

This was the conclusion of Joshua Olufemi, Founder and Executive Director of Dataphyte in his response to Dataphyte’s precision prediction of the outcome of the 2023 Presidential polls, after INEC announced the final results on Wednesday morning.

At the dawn of the first day of March 2023, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, emerged as the winner of the February 25, 2023, presidential elections to become Nigeria’s President-elect.

Dataphyte was the first to give a detailed prediction of a clear win for Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the first round of elections, without a tie and a need for a run-off election.

“This prediction cancels out the oft-speculated possibility of having ties at the first instance of the election on February 25, which would then occasion a rerun [sic] to determine the winner”, Dataphyte rightly predicted.

There is a 98% positive correlation between the actual reported votes for Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, and the other candidates in each State and the Dataphyte Prediction.

This means Dataphyte’s prediction of the Presidential elections matches the order of the final outcome by 98%.”

April

By April, the hot topics began to move slowly away from partisan politics to policy issues.

So, it was not surprising that, of the 5 published Dives in April, the second most read is To Fuel or Not to Fuel Subsidy: The $800 million question.

This time, the second part of March’s first runner-up, On Legitimacy and Legacy: Tinubu’s head and Troubles ahead (2) took the first spot as the most read newsletter in April. Here’s the Introduction:

“There is something off about the price of petrol in Nigeria!

Can you spot it? 🔬

If we can spot it, it could help us decide whether the government should continue to subsidise the current pump price or instead impose taxes on petrol consumption.

This is it: All over the world, the price of petrol, diesel and kerosene are relatively close. Petrol has the highest price, followed by diesel and kerosene. In short, petrol is the costliest and kerosene is the cheapest.

In Nigeria, the opposite is the case.