Coronavirus in Nigeria: Big Data Exposing How the People Feel About it All.


by Seamfix

In the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria, we carried out a nationwide survey in the month of March, using our Data Capture and Analytics Platform, BioRegistra. This we did to gather the opinions of Nigerians regarding the Coronavirus pandemic and how well the country is prepared for it.

Below is the result of the survey:

Awareness about the virus

We asked the audience if they are aware of the pandemic, Coronavirus (COVID 19)? It was encouraging when 100% of the audience selected the option ‘Yes, I am’.

Other options were ‘Maybe. I still think it’s fake news’ and ‘No. I have no idea what that is’.

Coronavirus in Nigeria

This time, we asked our audience if they believe the news that there is Coronavirus in Nigeria. 86.8% of the respondents believe that there is coronavirus in Nigeria. 10.5% say they are not completely sold on the news as something sounds fishy. The remaining 2.6% do not believe and think it’s all propaganda … Yikes!

Fear of the outcome

Does the idea that the virus is near scare you? We know fear doesn’t help, but it’s one emotion that will be predominant this period. Our data shows that 73.7% of the audience are scared to their bones that the virus is in Nigeria. 21.1% of them are only slightly bothered, while 5.2% are not shaken as they still doubt the news. For the 5.2%, it might be their strong belief in the idiom that ‘what you don’t know won’t hurt you’, or just pure unbelief in the face of alarming evidence.

Nigeria’s readiness to fight

The fight is tough, even for more advanced countries with their vast knowledge and know-how, especially because of past successful dealings with pandemics. So what about Nigeria, how equipped are we to deal with this virus?

42.1% (the majority) of our audience think Nigeria is not equipped to fight the virus alone. 7.9% believe Nigeria is doomed! And 13.3% will prefer to watch and see. For the positives: 5.3% believe Nigeria has all it takes to combat the virus alone, while 31.6% believe we can do even better with external help.

Willingness to get tested and quarantined

One effective way to truly flatten the curve will be to test more and get positive people into quarantine. So let’s say there were more test kits, will Nigerians be willing to comply?

6.5% of our audience are indeed willing to get tested for the virus and quarantined if necessary. 26.3% will get tested but would rather self-isolate… which is still another good measure. However, it is disconcerting that the rest of the respondents, which is the majority, believe they cannot have the virus either because of their strong immune system or that God will forbid it.

It is important to note that there is an option that says ‘No. I don’t trust the health system’, but none of the audience went for that option

The future: A Coronavirus-free Nigeria

Now, this is a future we all look forward to and hope will be sooner than later. We asked our audience what/who they think will be responsible for a Coronavirus-free Nigeria, and this is what we got:

57.9% of the audience believe team effort from government and citizens will help combat the virus. 10.5% agree that it will be good measures by health officials. 23.7% can bet that the virus will disappear as a result of fasting and prayers. Another 23.7% believe it will be because of our strong immunity. And yet again, another 23.7% believe it will be our hot weather. There is a whopping 5.3% who believe the country’s good luck and blessings will do it all. Finally, 2.6% are hopeful the virus will disappear on its own.

Few more weeks, and we’ll know who’s right for sure.

Classic symptoms of Coronavirus

We asked the audience to select amongst the following options, what the classic symptoms of COVID-19 are: Cough, Catarrh, Body pains, Bleeding, Fever, Convulsion, Sore throat, Itchy eyes, Rashes, and All of the above.

We found out that 73.7% of the audience are well aware of the classic symptoms of Coronavirus (cough, fever, sore throat, body pains, difficulty breathing). However, amongst them, some believe there are additional symptoms like itchy eyes, catarrh, bleeding, rashes and even convulsion.

Preventing the spread of the virus

And finally, we wanted to know to what extent our audience is aware of the measures they should take to flatten the curve in Nigeria. In the mix of proven measures, we also added the popular myths. The result below shows the percentage of people that believe the following measures:

Practice social distancing -100%
Avoid shaking hands -100%
Stay at home if you’re sick -100%
Wash your hands and use hand sanitizers -100%
Ban gatherings of all kind. Everyone should stay indoors -100%
Eat lots of garlic -87%
Eat lots of fruits and vegetables -87%
Gargle with saltwater -84%
Drink and bathe with hot water -80%
Believe, hope, and pray -52%


Nigerians need to be better educated and sensitized about the presence of the virus in the country, its dangers, and the measures to take to protect themselves and prevent further spread of the virus.

Every local media channel should be in the faces and ears of the people with top-of-the-mind awareness messages about the virus. These messages should provoke thoughts and not fear as that is the last thing we need right now.

You too can lend your voice and help us gather even more data. Here is the LINK to the survey. You can also set up your own survey for free using our solution. Click HERE to begin.

Remember to obey the laws of social distancing, stay safe, and follow only reliable news as reported by NCDC.

Turning Your Business’ Data Into Actionable Insights

by Seamfix

Digital technologies bring together more options for businesses, increasing competition and choice. This has benefits for consumers and sellers in the form of a broader, more competitive marketplace.

Current research by Berkeley researchers showed that five quintillion bytes of data are produced every two days. This is equal to all the information ever produced from every conversation that has ever taken place on the planet. Heavy duty, you say? You’re not alone, we think the same.

From our end of the equilibrium at Seamfix as well, we have discovered that there is a certain yearning for data among businesses, and for different purposes. Hence, the emergence of a solution like BioRegistra, which serves to whet the appetite for data by all kinds of organizations.

However, there are still businesses who don’t extensively realize the importance of data. Data, in a business context, is the information you obtain from users of your product or service, such as customer details and demographic information (there is more to the data stack though).

Below is a statistical prediction of revenues that can be generated from the big data market over the next couple of years until 2026.

This is a deliciously inviting sequence of figures. So filling that one would wonder why anyone wouldn’t want to take advantage of the data that are readily available. Bears can go into hibernation, data shouldn’t. It should be exploited, drilled, and played with, in every way possible.

How can data be exploited? We definitely wouldn’t leave you here. Which bring us to the next element — Analytics.

What is Analytics?

We know we said there is a yearning for data earlier. But you gotta beat that. There should be a yearning for its refinement as well. This is how we refer to analytics. The process of transforming data into insights. Retail giant Walmart was able to use Big Data analysis to drive a 10%-15% increase in completed online sales for $1 billion in incremental revenue, which is a well-planned ROI using data.

Analytics is how you make sense of your data and uncover meaningful trends. Analytics is the discovery of patterns and trends gleaned from your data. Think of data, without analytics, as unrefined oil. It is one thing to discover crude oil, it is yet another thing to make it suitable for consumption. There is tremendous value buried in those massive data sets, values that cannot be unlocked without the help of analytics.

You may have the information of users of your product. Great job, but, what have you done with this information? Have you been able to affect your business with it? Or is your data only a technical mannequin — an indulgence your business must afford?

A little diversion…

NB: No cause for alarm if you don’t have the information of your customers yet or if your organization is already thinking of it but do not have the necessary solutions to do so. There are several ways in which we can help you here. You can also see how we helped a leading provider of mobile data services capture lots of data.

Apologies if we distracted you, we just thought to provide you a little help in improving your business, too. Let’s continue rolling!

What we’re trying to say is, data collection is good but it’s like a baby’s first steps — limited and limp. Taking it a step further with analytics is the bomb! And the results are (often shockingly) rewarding. Who doesn’t want to be shocked with rewards?

This spins us to the next, and last, element in this article — Insights.

What are Insights?

Insight is the value obtained using analytics. The insights gained through analytics are incredible, powerful, and can be used to identify areas of opportunity for your business. Like a soothsayer is to some, so are the insights you get from data analysis. That “ugh-oh!” moment that can have a CEO or Marketing Manager have their mouths open at a new opportunity: How come I never saw this before? Well, praise be to big data analytics!

For a mobile app for instance, your data might tell you that you sent 14,000 push messages in the last month. That data on its own doesn’t mean all that much, but an analytics tool could dig through that data and reveal that your app sent 3.7 messages per user, with an open rate of 20%. This way, you can tell that your push campaigns are effective, or maybe not. The relevance of this is that you are able to get actionable insights from your data and its analysis.

Data, Analytics, & Insights: How Are They Connected?

Data is only valuable if translated into actionable insights; and for any serious institution it can become a framework for turning that data into meaningful stories, business successes and better decisions. Just like mineral resources are only truly valuable after they’ve been refined.

Analytics serve as the connection between your data and insights, and ultimately business success.

There is a symbiotic relationship between data and analytics, which when merged together give birth to a deeper understanding of your customers, with respect to your products or services. These insights then serve as a springboard for business decisions.

Using BioRegistra For Data Collection and Analytics

It won’t be so nice if we said all of the above and didn’t provide you with a solution, eh? It is then a good thing that we have something you can readily use. BioRegistra is an identity management and data capture platform with excellent biometric functions that allows your business to collect and analyze all kinds of data. So, you see, it not only helps you collect, it does what we’ve been preaching so far, data analysis.

We know how businesses are always on the lookout for solutions that are robust and tweak-able at the slightest business requirement. And this is what BioRegistra does really well, from enumeration to retail census, surveys, and more.

But let’s stick to why we’re here — data analysis. See some screenshots of analytic reports generated from our our BioRegistra analytics tool.

BioRegistra analytics can be represented based on your preference, including pie charts and bar charts, as in the case above. This analysis gives a bird’s view of your business and what’s going on in the project; of what is working and what is not. This important information helps to facilitate a benchmark for your business decisions moving forward.

For a better understanding of how BioRegistra works, visit here for more information.

See you next time with more data and KYC related tips for your business. Meanwhile, leave a comment and let us know what you think about data analytics for improving business.

Digitization is The Best Form of Data Archiving – Chimezie Emewulu

by Seamfix

Managing Director, SEAMFIX, Mr. Chimezie Emewulu, spoke to Emma Okonji on the benefits of BioRegistra in digitizing data capture and archiving for organizational growth. Excerpts:


Your company SEAMFIX, recently launched a new data management solution called BioRegistra. What is the solution all about and what does it seek to address?

BioRegistra is a platform for all forms of registrations that are designed to capture data for various reasons. So the platform helps people in digitizing their data, which is critical for business growth. People acquire data because they need the information captured in the data to do a lot of things.

The need to digitize data in the first instance will enable custodians of data to see their data real-time and make the best of the decision, based on the information they have at hand. BioRegistra can capture all forms of demographic data, including fingerprint and facial capture. We were motivated to design and create the BioRegistra based on the request we got from customers who felt the need for a solution that can capture data accurately and safely store such data for future use. Over the years. SEAMFIX  has been involved in data capturing for various organizations and it was based on our pedigree that customers came to us to seek for a solution that will address their business needs.

So we decided to create the BioRegistra, which is a generic platform that captures all manners of data from where people and businesses could source information from.

So with the ready platform, businesses will roll out much faster since every single data they need to promote their business, is already captured.


What is the cost implication of the solution for customers?

The cost implication is very minimal and it is almost free because businesses do no longer need to build their own data center to begin business. Again, customers pay according to what they use on the platform. It is easy to deploy since it is mobile device-based and most people have mobile phones that are connected to the internet. So the solution can be on the mobile phone, or on any device that is not mobile.


So how does it operate and what specific challenges does it address?

BioRegistra was designed to help businesses do more and achieve more. A lot of businesses that spend time capturing and analyzing data will find our solution very helpful. So it is a platform used for direct data acquisition such that the user does not need to start any form of reconciliation and that is a lot of value added for the customer. So SEAMFIX is adding value to the Nigerian economy, through its solutions that support businesses.


What is the advantage of the solution to customers?

Any customer that keys into the solution, gets the business transacted earlier than estimated. It helps to make quick and on the spot assessment and the decision making is faster once they have the data. It also helps to address a lot of reconciliatory issues with customers’ businesses. Again they do not need to invest in data, neither will they have to get worried about losing their data, since their data is securely kept. It is an enterprise portal system that provides business owners with access to data, anytime any day.


What kind of support does SEAMFIX offer the society where it operates?

We have a lot of internship programmes where we develop a lot of talents and we do a lot of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes to further add value to businesses. We are in partnership with the Education Society Council in Enugu State and we partnered them to provide educational materials, and classroom infrastructure and renovation, among others.


Data explosion is on the increase and the volume of communication is moving from voice to data. What is your take on data growth in Nigeria?

There has been tremendous growth in data across all sectors of the Nigerian economy, but the issue on ground is that most of the data are not digitally archived for the future. In the education sector, most schools, including tertiary institutions still keep data in hard copies of papers instead of in electronic form, which I refer to as digital archiving. University of Nigeria, Nsukka for instance, until last year, had all its students data in physical hard copies, which could be lost to fire outbreak or even insects at any given time, but when the school authority invited us to help them out, we took all the physical copies of students’ results, certificates, and other academic records and digitised them, after which we ran analysis on them to find out the courses that students passed the most and courses that students failed the most. So the school is now able to know, within seconds, the number of students that graduated with first class, second class upper, second class lower and third class in a particular year, a situation that takes them months to analyze before we were introduced to the school system. So the consciousness of digitally archiving data is gradually gaining grounds in most sectors of the economy.


Most organizations still host their data outside the country for fear of data loss due to insecurity. How can you raise the confidence of organizations to begin to capture data in Nigeria and host same in Nigeria?

With our solution, which is cloud-based, customers do not need to entertain fears about generating data and hosting such data in Nigeria because our solution comes with high level of security protection.


Most data generated in Nigeria, operate in silos, but there is a need to harmonize the various data into a single data platform. What is your take on this?

SEAMFIX is worried that several data in Nigeria operate in silos and we are interested in harmonizing such data into a single platform for easy access if given the opportunity to do so. Again, we have the capacity to harmonize existing government data that are seated in various offices, but my worry is that government may not want to give such task to a homegrown company like SEAMFIX, despite the fact that we are capable of achieving a good result if given the opportunity. If allowed to do so, I am assuring the federal government, state and local governments that SEAMFIX will always deliver in record-breaking time.


Most times organizations need solutions that could clean up their existing data that may have been wrongly captured. Do you have solutions for that?

The BioRegistra solution that we just launched has the capabilities to clean up all existing data of organizations that were improperly captured. The solution is able to carry out deep facial analysis of photographs of people that had long been captured and identify whether the earlier registration captured the picture very well. The analysis will detect errors in registration and flag it down to identify it. Once that is detected, the person could be invited for re-capturing.


How will your solution enhance quality data capturing for organizations that are known for quality?

In data capturing, quality is key, and three major things could lead to quality. They are the demographics capturing, the fingerprint capturing and the facial capturing. In capturing demographics, we need to consider the regular patterns of some names and validate them, and this will help to easily identify wrong names. For the facial capturing, we consider the analysis and validation of the photo at the point of capture to ascertain the real photo of the person involved. We are also able to capture data offline and that makes it easier for data capturing in areas where there is no internet connection. For the fingerprint, we also consider capturing the exact template size that will enable the creation of a template for identification purpose. Our solution ensures that the right quality fingerprint is captured and stored in the right format for easy conversion.


How cost-effective is your solution, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs)?

Our solution is extremely cost-effective, both for SMEs and big enterprises, and this is so because customers pay for what they use and the burden of getting the infrastructure to capture organizational data, is completely removed from the organization, and this, of course, allows them to face their core businesses. What they need do is to pay per capture and that makes it less expensive for customers. All we need to know at SEAMFIX is about the volume of data that the organization wants to capture and in record time, we get it done for the customer.


How do you address downtime in an organization, using your solution?

We have uptime objective of 99.997per cent, which is a very high signal level for any business to thrive on. A lot of time, we maintain high-level uptime in our data capturing and management.


Is your solution secured and easily assessable?

Our solution is highly secured and easily assessable because of the high-quality features embedded in it. It has a high level of encryption that makes it highly secured and it is user-friendly, such that customers can adopt it and use it with ease. Again the backend has a lot of fireworks that makes it even more secured.


The federal government is particular about local content development. What amount of local content is embedded in your solution?

The BioRegistra we just launched, has 100 percent local content. It was developed by Nigerians and the solution was developed from the beginning to the end with local materials and by local software developers. Again, the company is managed by Nigerians and the staff comprises young Nigerians.


You started SEAMFIX about 10 years ago from a three bedroom flat with N75,000, but today it has grown into millions of naira investments. What has been the challenges and prospects?

There has been a lot of challenges ranging from personal experience and from the government side of it. Funding used to be a major challenge at a time but we were able to overcome it through resilience and perseverance. A lot of customers who did not understand what we were doing, tried to discourage us, but we remained resolute and committed to our goals. Another challenge we had was that of mentorship but it was also resolved when we met some good industry players who understood our dreams and aspirations and they stood by us. We had challenges of infrastructure and we had to provide internet connectivity for ourselves by investing in fiber cable laying, which often times they are destroyed by the government during road construction.


How will you rate customers’ acceptability and adaptability to the BioRegistra solution?

Acceptance rate is growing as customers get to understand the unique features of our solution. The solution is also app-based and could be downloaded from the Google Play Store and it comes with an education menu that teaches people how to apply it in their various businesses. The site is very flexible and has a lot of training materials that customer could use for self-training. The solution will be quite useful for internal revenue generation because it captures right data that will address revenue loss in organizations.