…Harps on e-birth registration for Nigerian children
By Adeyinka Adeniran
The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has said registering the birth of the Nigerian child is not just a mere procedural formality but also their right to have a legal identity.
Harping on the need for electronic birth registration for children in Nigeria, the international agency said, a registered child has acknowledged rights to protection, healthcare, education, and particularly, visibility to the government, among other critical services.
Chief of UNICEF Field Office for Southwest Nigeria, Celine Lafoucriere, made the call in a remark at the opening of a media dialogue on e-birth registration in Southwest Nigeria.
The event held in collaboration with the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development and the National Population Commission (NPoPc) with the theme “Giving Every Child a Legal Identity: A Media Dialogue to Drive E-Birth Registration in Southwest Nigeria.”
Noting that it is important to give every child an identity, which can be achieved through registration, she said the E-registration is important to generate statistics for effective planning as it will enhance national planning and development for the country.
According to the UNICEF Chief, with efficient e-birth registration for the country, government at all levels will be able to adequately plan and implement policies that will cater to the needs of the people, particularly young citizens.
She said: “This gathering of journalists across the Southwest of Nigeria, and as you know for us in UNICEF, you are very crucial partners in support of our mission to ensure that every child in Nigeria is given the right to a legal identity, as you know, or UNICEF and for everyone around the world.
“It is every child’s right to have a legal identity. It is very key. It is not simply a procedural formality. It is a fundamental human right, as I explain, and the cornerstone of a child legal identity. Without that, the child remains remains invisible.
“A registered child has acknowledged rights to protection but also to healthcare, education and other critical services. It is very important. Without child registration, those children remain invisible to our governments, making it, of course, a very big challenge to plan adequately for the children’s rights.
“This event centered around that transformative potential of E-birth registration as it is a formidable opportunity to get more children registered and have a legal identity.
“It cuts off the issues of geographic distance. It makes it easier for parents to register their children as soon as they are born.
“It’s an innovative approach. It stands truly as a game changer for a country like Nigeria, with its sometimes such huge distances to cover, and it will, with your help enhance accessibility and efficiency of the birth registration processes.
“Besides from birth registration, it also presents a huge opportunity to create a very robust and reliable civil registration system.
“That not only recalls birth, but also generates vital statistics that are, as you know, necessary for effective planning and implementation of policy, but also for budgeting, and that is extremely crucial. If the government does not know how many children it has to budget for, it cannot do it efficiently.
In his presentation, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, Denis Onoise said the NPoPC was targeting more than nine million birth registrations for children under five years and four million registrations for children under one year of age in 2024
Onoise maintained that to achieve proper e-registration for children in the country, there is a need to partner with primary health centres in the country.
While emphasising that available statistics show that people in rural areas registered their children during birth with 78.90 percent more than those in urban areas with 44.8 percent, he said that the integration of birth registration with the National Identification Number (NIN) will go a long way in providing adequate data for the birth data base in the country.
On his part, NPoPC Lagos Office Director, Bamidele Sadiku, who said that the e-birth registration platform would provide better lives for Nigerians, stressed that the system would also prevent double birth and death registrations in the country.
Sadiku revealed that NPoPC had begun a move to partner with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to link both registrations with the NIN.
“From time to time, we receive complaints from the EFCC and other security agencies on the issue of birth registration. But e-registration will solve multiple birth and death registrations because it will be linked with the NIN. This will give identity to every child that is born in the country.
“The synergy with NIN is there already. It is good, and it will help us to have a common database. We need the media to give us the support to send this message across Nigeria.”
The Permanent Secretary of the Lagos Ministry of Youth and Social Development said the state government was doing everything possible to secure the future of the children with proper e-birth registration, emphasising that the media was very important in the drive for e-birth registration in the country.
