Happy Hour: International and Individual Perspectives
“Papa Davina, also known as Teribogo, preferred to craft his own words of wisdom. Such, for instance, was his famous: “Perspective is all””.
These were the opening lines in Wole Soyinka’s latest novel, Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth. 📖
Soyinka comically chronicled the tragic underpinnings of contemporary life in Nigeria as “art and instant history” when he mused:
“Not many nations, for instance, could boast of a Ministry of Happiness. Yet this was an innovation that came from one of the most impoverished states within that federated nation. Its pioneer minister - known as Commissioner - was the spouse of the imaginative governor, while other members of the family and relations filled the various positions generated by the unique cabinet installation.”
Outside the novel, Governor Rochas Okorocha pioneered the Ministry of Happiness and Couples Fulfillment in Nigeria and appointed his sister, Ogechi Ololo, as the Commissioner. Ms Ololo was previously her brother's chief of staff, and his former adviser on domestic matters.
The BBC reported that the announcement was met with derision, even after the Ministry’s designation was corrected to Ministry of Happiness and Purpose Fulfillment.
It is not clear what the people derided - the imaginative governor’s quest for his people’s happiness or his preference for his sister to coordinate that public bliss.
Nonetheless, governments have a responsibility to keep their citizens happy, though they cannot determine whether every citizen will feel happy.
Nigerians see themselves on the fourth step, and just about rising to the fifth step, on life’s 10-step ladder of happiness. 🪜
With zero as the lowest place and 10 the highest level of happiness, Nigerians score themselves 4.98 in the 2023 World Happiness Report.
At 4.98, Nigeria scores below the average of 5.54, and below Bolivia, the country with the median score of 5.684
The 2023 World Happiness Report noted that “more and more people have come to believe that our success as countries should be judged by the happiness of our people. There is also a growing consensus about how happiness should be measured. This consensus means that national happiness can now become an operational objective for governments.”
Yet, it appears that governments in Nigeria and the citizenry have not reached that kind of consensus on how they measure happiness.
For instance, besides Governor Rochas Okorocha’s famous attempt at a state-led happiness endeavour, another governorship candidate for Akwa Ibom State, Umo Eno, promised a state-wide happy hour for its citizens which is centred on nothing but beer subsidies for them to relax after the day’s work.🍺
Now as the Governor-elect, Umo Eno declared that “the happy hour has began (sic)!” 🍻
Ministries of Happiness are not new. They emerged as governments began to set happiness and well-being as their key deliverables and duties to their citizens.
For instance, rather than promise beer subsidies at some happy hour to their citizens, the Ministry of Happiness in the United Arab Emirate works with the country's National Charter for Happiness thus:
Appointing CEOs for happiness and well-being at all government bodies
Establishing councils for happiness and wellbeing at federal entities
Allocating time for happiness-related programmes and activities at the federal government
Establishing offices for happiness and wellbeing
Transforming customer service centres into customer happiness centres
Including annual indexes, surveys and reports to measure happiness in all community segments
Adoption of a standard form for corporate happiness and wellbeing at all government bodies.
In the quest for their people’s happiness 🎎, Japan and the United Kingdom also set up the Ministry of Loneliness.
“Once happiness is accepted as the goal of government, this has other profound effects on institutional practices. Health, especially mental health, assumes even more priority, as does the quality of work, family life, and community,” the 2023 Report.
Nigeria’s federal, state and local governments do not have such an organised approach to measuring and mainstreaming happiness among its citizens.
However, the 2023 Global Happiness Report notes that:
The effectiveness of the government has a major influence on human happiness of the people.
The capacity of a state can be well-measured by
its fiscal capacity (ability to raise money)
its collective capacity (ability to deliver services)
its legal capacity (rule of law)
Also crucial are
the avoidance of civil war, and
the avoidance of repression.
Across countries, all these five measures are well correlated with the average life satisfaction of the people.
International Perspectives
“The economics of happiness is an approach to assessing welfare which combines the techniques typically used by economists with those more commonly used by psychologists,” Carol Graham wrote in the journal of World Economics.
“It relies on surveys of the reported well-being of hundreds of thousands of individuals across countries and continents. It also relies on more expansive notions of utility than does conventional economics, highlighting the role of non-income factors that affect well-being.
“It is well suited to informing questions in areas where revealed preferences provide limited information, such as the welfare effects of inequality and of macroeconomic policies such as inflation and unemployment,” Graham remarked.
In measuring and explaining national differences in life evaluations, The 2023 Global Happiness Report relied “on three main well-being indicators: life evaluations, positive emotions, and negative emotions (described in the report as positive and negative affect).
Our happiness rankings are based on life evaluations, as the more stable measure of the quality of people’s lives.”
For Life evaluation, six variables were considered: These variables are GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption.
However, In World Happiness Report 2023, special attention was paid “to specific daily emotions (the components of positive and negative affect) to better track how COVID-19 has altered different aspects of life.”
Going by the six life evaluation variables and residual emotional affect, citizens of 12 countries perceive themselves to be on the 7th step of life’s 10-step ladder of happiness. These are Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Austria, and Australia.
Afghanistans see themselves on the first and lowest step on the 10-step ladder of happiness. The people of Lebanon see themselves on this second ladder. 🪜
The people in eight countries see themselves on the third step. These are Zambia, Tanzania, Comoros, Malawi, Botswana, Congo Kinshasha, Zimbabwe, and Sierra Leone. All these are Sub-Saharan African countries.
The people in the rest countries perceive themselves to be on the fourth, fifth and sixth step of life’s 10-step ladder of happiness, including Nigeria, which still is on the fourth step.
The Report annotated further on its measure of the six variables of life evaluations and the binary emotions:
Life evaluations. The Gallup World Poll, which remains the principal source of data in this report, asks respondents to evaluate their current life as a whole using the image of a ladder, with the best possible life for them as a 10 and worst possible as a 0. Each respondent provides a numerical response on this scale, referred to as the Cantril ladder. Typically, around 1,000 responses are gathered annually for each country. Weights are used to construct population-representative national averages for each year in each country. We base our usual happiness rankings on a three-year average of these life evaluations, since the larger sample size enables more precise estimates.
Positive emotions. Positive affect is given by the average of individual yes or no answers about three emotions: laughter, enjoyment, and interest (for details see Technical Box 2).
Negative emotions. Negative affect is given by the average of individual yes or no answers about three emotions: worry, sadness, and anger.
Comparing life evaluations and emotions:
Life evaluations provide the most informative measure for international comparisons because they capture quality of life in a more complete and stable way than do emotional reports based on daily experiences.
Life evaluations differ more between countries than do emotions and are better explained by the widely differing life experiences in different countries. Emotions yesterday are well explained by events of the day being asked about, while life evaluations more closely reflect the circumstances of life as a whole. We show later in the chapter that emotions are significant supports for life evaluations.
Positive emotions are more than twice as frequent (global average of 0.66) as negative emotions (global average of 0.29), even during the three COVID years 2020-2022.
For those in Nigeria, so much positive emotions could have swelled in the Eid and Easter festivities but this is counterbalanced by reports of killings all over the country.
As we have seen, Nigerians see themselves standing firmly on the fourth step of life’s 10-step ladder of happiness. Those polled are from all walks of life, rich and poor, healthy and unhealthy.
What if you are to evaluate yourself, on what step would you be on that 10-step ladder of happiness?
I’ll tell you the step I think I’m on next week. We’ll measure it together as we move from the international to the individual measurements of happiness.
Remember, Perspective 👓 is all!
Have a happy weekend! 🤗