MICS7: FG, UNICEF To Launch New Survey In 2026

Federal government through the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has disclosed plans to unveil results of the 7th round of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS7) in 2026.

The statistician-general of the federation and the chief executive officer, NBS, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, disclosed this at the survey design workshop for the 7th round of MICS and National Immunisation Coverage Survey (NICS) yesterday in Lagos.

Adeniran said MICS/NICS is one of the surveys that organisations, governments, and policymakers use to decide how to formulate programs and projects and to monitor those projects, while claiming that Nigerian MICS has always been the best, not just in Africa but also worldwide, because it is the largest and of the highest quality.

“When we say aspirations of government and people of Nigeria, we are saying that the survey must be designed in a way that meets the government expectation to be able to use the results of the survey to measure the performance and progress made in the area of state priorities, as well as meeting up with the data required to assess our country when it comes to progress made in the area of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Renewed Hope Agenda of this present administration,” he stated.

On the workshop, the NBS CEO stated that the workshop is the pre-stage of the survey, adding that, it brings together critical stakeholders, including partners from Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of Government, the representatives of the state government through the assistant general of the State Bureau of Statistics, and civil society organisations that are working in the area of women, children, adolescents, and men, to brainstorm on the best way to design and implement the MICS7/NICS in terms of the development of an appropriate region that will meet all the aspirations of the Nigerian government and Nigerians at large, as well as determining the sample size that will be robust enough to give quality estimates.

“Stakeholders are here to design the questionnaire for the survey tools that we are going to be using in interviewing the respondents across the country. It is also a workshop where we are going to determine the number of households and the number of areas that we are going to be visiting such that we will be able to cover the nooks and crannies of the country and also have enough samples that will represent the responses or information from the entire country,” he added.

UNICEF’s chief of planning, monitoring, and reporting, Wayne Bacale, stated in his remarks that UNICEF is a very significant partner of NBS. “Our purpose is to provide assistance, introduce best practices, and connect global specialists. Because of this, a representative from the regional office is here as one of our regional experts. Thus, we want to ensure that NBS has all the necessary resources as well as cutting-edge ideas and trends. This is the journey for the next two years. We are bringing in professionals from across the globe to train participants in Nigeria, ensuring that we have the necessary financial and technical know-how,” he added.

Regional MICS coordinator, UNICEF, Stephanie Kauv, reaffirmed that the goal of the collaboration between NBS and UNICEF is to guarantee the survey’s success. “We are putting a lot of effort into making this survey more reliable. To make sure that the data we collect are representative, we have formed a national steering group and technical committee comprised of professionals from the government, UNICEF, and academia. In addition, we are deploying innovative ways of collecting data and estimations. For the first time, we will be collecting data at the local government level for the entire country.”