The Segmentation of Local Government Areas: Creating a New Geography of Nigeria

Abstract

Social area classifications group areas on the basis of social or socioeconomic similarity into cluster units which define their demographic and social characteristics. The methods used to create these systems combine geographic thought and theory with statistical manipulations of multivariate data. The development and use of geodemographic systems appear to be restricted within developing countries. Some commentators suggest that area classifications may not offer benefits to these countries. This paper argues that the developing world has a lot to benefit from this type of geography. It presents the case of Nigeria where a classification system has been developed for the 774 Local Government Areas (LGA) of the country. Insight is provided into the variables and methodological approach that has been used to create the Nigerian system.

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“…Geodemographic classifications are spatial segmentations that use multi-criteria and geo-statistical techniques to group places and people into clusters of similarity (Harris et al, 2005). There is a significant amount of interest in the development and adaptation of geodemographic problem-solving approaches across much of the developed world (Vickers and Rees, 2006;Willis et al, 2010;Kimura et al, 2011;Singleton and Spielman, 2014) with minimal application in developing countries (Ojo and Ezepue, 2011;Ojo et al, 2012;Ojo et al, 2013).…”

“…Geodemographic segmentations are generally developed by adapting clustering algorithms to relatively big multivariate spatial datasets (Ojo et al, 2012). This allows small areas to be grouped on the basis of their similarity in taxonomic space.…”

“…Although the availability of geodemographics is not yet widespread across Africa (Ojo and Ezepue, 2011), relevant statutory emergency response agencies in Nigeria can access an open-source geodemographic system (Ojo et al, 2012). Similarly, rapid global digital revolution has led to the development of several opensource Geographical Information Systems (GIS) (Travis, 2015).…”

“…The geodemographic segmentation encapsulates variables derived from the Nigerian Census and other national surveys (Ojo et al, 2012).…”

“…Almost 35,000 data points spread across 10 thematic domains were fused together using a multicriteria clustering procedure (Ojo et al, 2012;Ojo, 2010). The data domains include Agriculture, Demographics, Education, Employment, Health, Household Composition, Household Infrastructure, Housing, Socioeconomics and Women and Children.…”