The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is set to conduct the fifth in the series of Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) for 960 households across the country as parts of efforts to assess the situation of women and children in areas of health, education, child protection and others, and it will cost about N1.2billion, Statistician General of the Federation, Dr. Yemi Kale has said. The Statistician General disclosed this while speaking to newsmen in Abuja as part of plans to sensitize Nigerians to give maximum support to enumerators who would be in the field to carry out the exercise.
Dr. Kale who was represented at the occasion by the Director of Real Sector and Statistics, Mr Isiaka Olarewaju said the MICS5 will cover all the states of the federation and FCT, adding that Nine hundred and sixty (960) selected households will be interviewed in each state, stressing that the NBS enumerators will be in the field for the next three months to administer questionnaires on the selected households for the survey.
Harping on the uniqueness of MICS 5, Mr. Olarewaju further said that it is the first time Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) is being used to collect data on MICS, adding that National Immunization Coverage Survey (NICS) will be combined with MICS 5 in making one National Survey at a time.
Mr Olarewaju also noted that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is the implementing Agency of MICS 5 with technical and financial support from UNICEF. Other major stakeholders in the implementation of MICS 5 include; Ministry of Budget and National Planning, National Population Commission, the Federal ministries of Health, Education, Agriculture and Water Resources, WHO, WB, NPHCDA, NACA, office of the Senior Special Assistant on SDGs, Lagos and Kano states.
Also speaking at the occasion, the Chief planning, Monitoring and Evaluation and Coordination of UNICEF Country office in Nigeria, Mr. Denis Jobin said the MICS is a household based survey developed by UNICEF and designed to assess the situation of children and women in the areas of health, education, child protection and HIV/AIDS worldwide.
Jobin also said that MICS can be used as data collection tool in monitoring progress of national goals and global commitments aimed at promoting the welfare of children, including Sustainable development goal (SDGs).
In Nigeria, this MICS is the fifth of a series which started in 1995 and has been extended to include questionnaire for individual men and modules such as water quality test, tobacco and alcohol use, life satisfaction, access to mass media and use of information communication technology.
The objectives of the survey include among others to provide up-to-date information on the situation of children and women in Nigeria, to strengthen national statistical capacity by focusing on data gathering, quality of survey information, statistical tracking and analysis, apart from contributing to the improvement of data and monitoring systems in Nigeria.
Other objectives of the survey include strengthening technical expertise in the design, implementation and analysis of such systems, to serve as baseline for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda and to provide statistics to complement and assess the quality of data from recent national surveys such as Nigerian General Household Panel Survey (NGHPS) and National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) conducted by National Population Commission.
