..NPC targets 13m registration in 2024
By Wuraola Oyedokun
The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), on Tuesday, said all Nigerian children must enrol on electronic birth registration to guarantee their legal right to an identity.
Chief of UNICEF Field Office for Southwest Nigeria, Celine Lafoucriere, disclosed that with e-birth registration poised to ensure individual’s identities, the system will also enhance national planning and development for the country.
Lafoucriere stated this during a two-day media dialogue on e-birth registration 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.”
According to the UNICEF Chief, with efficient e-birth registration for the country, governments 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: “It is important to give every child an identity, and this can be achieved through registration. E-registration is important to generate statistics for effective planning. If adequate statistics are not available, the government might not be able to adequately plan for children.”
In his presentation, Denis Onoise, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist,
said that 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 was 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 per cent 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.