NigeriaPolls · Comparison
GeoPoll and NigeriaPolls
Compared on what you can check: who gets asked, how much of Nigeria is covered, how the fieldwork is verified, and what you may do with the data afterwards.
In short
GeoPoll is a large multi-country survey operation. NigeriaPolls is a Nigerian specialist. The honest difference is breadth against depth: they cover a great many countries, we cover one in detail.
GeoPoll states that it operates in over 120 countries, conducts more than 5 million surveys a year, and works through a network of over 10,000 trained interviewers across 65 call centres with a profiled panel of 5 million respondents. Those are their published figures and we do not dispute them.
What a specialist offers instead is depth in one market: all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, samples designed to be readable at state and constituency level, political and electoral work as a core line, interviewers who live in the states being surveyed, every recorded interview verified rather than a sample, a published methodology and data licensed CC BY 4.0.
Background
What GeoPoll does
GeoPoll runs mobile-first survey research across emerging markets. On its own site it states operations in over 120 countries, more than 5 million surveys conducted each year, a network of over 10,000 trained interviewers across 65 call centres, partnerships with mobile network operators, and a profiled panel of 5 million respondents reaching more than 300 million people across Africa, Asia and Latin America. It collects by telephone, SMS and mobile modes, with main operations in Kenya and headquarters in the United States.
It also publishes how it checks quality: AI review of call transcripts to confirm interviewers follow the protocol and stay on script, with long pauses and inconsistencies flagged for human follow-up, alongside automated checks and human review of data and audio. That is a more specific public commitment than most firms in this market make, and it is worth saying so.
Figures and quality description as published on geopoll.com. We make no claim about their pricing or results.
Our work
What NigeriaPolls does
We are a Nigerian primary research firm. We design and run original studies across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Some clients arrive with a finished questionnaire. Many arrive with a decision and no clear idea what to ask, which is the more common case and often the more interesting one. We work either way. We will field your instrument as written, or sit down and work out what the decision actually turns on, what can be measured, and which questions will survive contact with a Nigerian respondent. A question that reads well in a boardroom frequently needs rewriting before it works in Hausa on a phone call, and knowing that in advance is most of the job.
Political and electoral
- Voter sentiment and voting intention tracking
- Candidate and party favourability, issue salience
- State, senatorial district and LGA level reads
- Turnout modelling and scenario analysis
- Political risk research for investors and operators
- 1,701 office holders across 36 states and the FCT
Commercial and social
- Brand health tracking, market entry, concept testing
- Pricing research and segmentation
- Customer experience, NPS and employee experience
- Qualitative: focus groups and in-depth interviews
- Mystery shopping and omnibus studies
- Monitoring and evaluation, audience research
How we collect it
Our interviewers are Nigerian and based across the country rather than concentrated in one city, working on our own voice infrastructure connected directly to a Nigerian carrier trunk rather than routed through an overseas gateway. An interviewer who lives in the state being surveyed brings the language and the local knowledge with them.
Four channels: live telephone interviewing for long and complex questionnaires, SMS for short instruments and respondents without smartphones, WhatsApp for longer conversational questionnaires, and in-person interviewing by field teams deployed into the specific local government areas a sample requires. That fourth channel decides whether a study reflects Nigeria or only the connected part of it. Mode is recorded on every response and reconciled so nobody is counted twice.
How it is verified
Most survey research verifies a sample of completed interviews. We verify all of them. Every recorded interview is transcribed and checked automatically against the approved questionnaire, the answers logged for that respondent and the disposition the interviewer assigned. Anything that cannot be reconciled goes to a human reviewer, and interviews that fail are excluded with the reason recorded, so exclusions are auditable rather than invisible.
Alongside that run back-checks that re-contact a sample of completed interviews, and screening against the NCC do-not-disturb register before any outbound calling. The full method is published at nigeriapolls.com/methodology, and our capabilities are listed at nigeriapolls.com/capabilities.
Side by side
At a glance
| NigeriaPolls | GeoPoll | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic focus | Nigeria only, all 36 states and the FCT | 120+ countries (their figure) |
| Collection | Telephone, SMS, WhatsApp, in-person | Telephone, SMS and mobile modes |
| Political and electoral work | Core line, including state and constituency reads | Public opinion research among a wider mix |
| Interview verification | Every recorded interview | AI review of call transcripts (their description) |
| Methodology | Published in full | Quality approach published |
| Data licence | CC BY 4.0, commercial reuse permitted | Not published as open data |
What it means for you
A mile wide, or a mile deep in the country you care about
A firm operating in 120 countries carries real advantages. If your study spans Nigeria, Kenya and Indonesia, one supplier covering all three is simpler than three suppliers, and scale buys infrastructure a specialist cannot match.
Breadth is bought somewhere, though, and it is bought in depth. An operation spread across 65 call centres in 65 markets is organised around what is common between countries. A Nigerian specialist is organised around what is specific to this one: that a question about fuel subsidy lands differently in Kano than in Port Harcourt, that a respondent reasoning in their second language gives shorter and flatter answers, that the places a phone survey reaches least are often the places an election turns on.
So the question is not which firm is larger. It is whether your question is about several countries or about this one. If it is about Nigeria, and particularly about a specific part of Nigeria, depth is what you are buying and depth is what we are built for.
On verification we would make one distinction. Reviewing transcripts on a sample is good practice and more than most firms publish. We review every recorded interview rather than a sample, which is a difference of degree, and the degree is the point.
Before you commission
Five questions worth asking any research firm
Ask them of us too. Our answers are published rather than promised.
- Is this primary data, or analysis of data someone else collected? Both are useful. Knowing which you are buying is not optional.
- How many states will actually be in field, and which ones? Zonal representation is not state coverage.
- What is the sample size, and what breakdowns will it support? Ask how many respondents sit behind each cut you intend to report separately.
- Can I read the full methodology before I commit? Sampling frame, weighting, quality controls and limitations should be published, not described on a call.
- How is interview quality verified, and on what share of interviews? A sample is normal. All of them is better.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is GeoPoll?
GeoPoll is a mobile-first survey research company operating across emerging markets. It states that it works in over 120 countries, conducts more than 5 million surveys a year, and uses a network of over 10,000 trained interviewers across 65 call centres, with main operations in Kenya and headquarters in the United States.
Is GeoPoll available in Nigeria?
GeoPoll operates across Africa including Nigeria as part of its multi-country footprint. The practical question for a buyer is whether a study needs several countries covered by one supplier, or one country covered in depth.
What does a Nigeria-only research firm offer that a multi-country firm does not?
Depth rather than breadth. Samples designed to be readable at state, senatorial district or local government area level, interviewers who live in the states being surveyed and moderate in the language respondents actually think in, political and electoral work as a core service line, and a methodology written for the specific problems of surveying Nigeria rather than generalised across markets.
Which states does NigeriaPolls cover?
All 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Samples are designed to be readable at the level your decision is about, which for political work is usually a state, a senatorial district or a local government area rather than the country as a whole.
How does NigeriaPolls verify interview quality?
Every recorded interview is transcribed and checked automatically against the approved questionnaire, the answers logged for that respondent and the disposition the interviewer assigned. Most research verifies a sample; we verify all of them. Anything that cannot be reconciled goes to a human reviewer, and interviews that fail are excluded with the reason recorded so exclusions are auditable.
Can I reuse NigeriaPolls data commercially?
Published data is released under CC BY 4.0, so you may reuse, adapt and redistribute it commercially with attribution and without negotiating a licence. Data from a commissioned study belongs to the arrangement agreed with that client.
Commission a study
Political, electoral, consumer or social. Tell us the question and the geography and we will come back with a methodology, a timetable and a fixed price.