By Elizabeth Osayande

Nigeria is striving to achieve ambitious development goals, yet its data systems remain outdated. While numerous programs and policies are emerging across health, education, and youth empowerment, much of the nation’s data is still trapped within ineffective collection and reporting mechanisms. This has created a vconcerning visibility gap: policymakers and funders are often operating without clear insights.

Ms. Oluwayemisi Adepele Owoade, a Data Analyst at CHES Empowerment Foundation, is leading the charge to change this landscape. From 2019 to 2024, she has built a robust analytics framework that showcases the potential of treating data as an essential infrastructure rather than an afterthought.

Data isn’t just about counting people; it’s about making people count,” Owoade emphasises.

At CHES, she developed predictive analytics frameworks, real-time geospatial mapping systems, and digital monitoring dashboards that transformed fragmented program records into policy-relevant intelligence. The results have been significant:

• Reach and Scale: Over 5,656 participants engaged across Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, Rivers, Kwara, Kaduna, and Enugu, creating a multi-state snapshot of social and health needs.
• NEET Youth Recovery:By focusing on “Not in Education, Employment, or Training”, NEET youth, CHES achieved an 86% reintegration rate, influencing government and donor strategies for scalable employment models.
• Health Risk Stratification: Data across six geopolitical zones revealed that 33.9% of individuals struggled with substance abuse, 31.91% faced untreated mental health conditions, and only 34.18% met baseline health criteria. These insights led to the establishment of mobile clinics, psychosocial support, and addiction counseling in underserved areas.
• Employment Outcomes:Nearly 49.6% (2,841 participants) secured jobs within a year, aided by adaptive analytics that aligned them with opportunity indices and sector demand.
• Geospatial Intelligence:** A live GIS dashboard indicated that 73.95% of CHES’s impact footprint was in South-West Nigeria, prompting a reconsideration of expansion plans and logistics deployment.

“These are not merely programme metrics,” Owoade explains. “They are policy signals that reveal where inequities exist, identify which interventions promote equity, and guide the allocation of limited resources for maximum impact.”

Five Shifts to Unlock Nigeria’s Data Potential

Through her work, Owoade has identified five practical reforms that could transform Nigeria’s data ecosystem:
Fund the Full Data Supply Chain: Dashboards without reliable sources are merely decorative. Investment must encompass data collection, validation, secure storage, and maintenance.
Mandate Disaggregation: Indicators should always be broken down by gender, income, location, disability, and education to uncover hidden disparities.
Institutionalize Feedback Loops: Local governments and civil society groups need to receive actionable insights, not just reporting demands.
Adopt Geospatial Targeting: GIS should be the default tool for locating clinics, schools, and job centers.
Professionalize Public-Sector Analytics: Data engineers and statisticians require defined career tracks tied to measurable policy impact.

A Data Agenda for Health, Education, and Jobs

Health: Utilize analytics to stratify risks, tailor outreach for substance abuse and mental health, and reward verified health outcomes.
Education: Predictive models can identify at-risk students and facilitate targeted nutrition and cash transfers to prevent attrition.
Employment:Align youth training with verified job vacancies and monitor job retention as a measure of success, not merely enrollment.

From Pilots to Policy

Nigeria does not lack successful pilot programmes; it needs systems that can scale them. Owoade’s experience at CHES demonstrates that when clean, timely, and disaggregated data is connected to decision-making, outcomes improve.

“Our policy debates will always be passionate,” she states, “but they must also be grounded in evidence. Data is not a luxury in public policy; it enhances the effectiveness of every other investment.”

Redefining the Future of Governance in Nigeria

By bridging Nigeria’s data gap, Ms. Owoade is illustrating how evidence-based analytics can transform policymaking, empower communities, and improve outcomes across various sectors. She envisions a country where every community is visible, every inequity is measurable, and every policy is founded on facts rather than assumptions. This vision is urgently needed in Nigeria and could redefine the future of governance and sustainable development.