The National Population Commission (NPC), National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have intensified efforts to ensure that every Nigerian child is registered at birth and receives a legal identity from the earliest stage of life.
The stakeholders are advocating stronger integration of birth registration with primary healthcare services, decentralisation of registration centres to local communities and seamless interoperability between Nigeria’s civil registration and national identity management systems.
The renewed initiative is particularly focused on newborns and children below one year, with stakeholders stressing that timely birth registration is essential to ensuring access to healthcare, education, social protection and other basic services.
The initiative is part of broader efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s civil registration and vital statistics system and address the large number of children who do not have official documentation proving their legal identity.
Speaking at a media dialogue on birth registration for children under one year, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, Denis Onoise, said the challenge should not be viewed simply as parents failing to register their children.
According to him, government must also address the barriers that prevent families from accessing registration services.
Onoise identified inadequate registration centres, long distances to registration points, language barriers, inefficient registration processes and insufficient financial, human and material resources as some of the major obstacles limiting access to civil registration services.
He said families also incur indirect costs when attempting to register their children, including transportation expenses, time spent away from work and the cost of making repeated trips to registration centres.
He noted that the situation was particularly difficult for families living in hard-to-reach communities and disadvantaged populations.
The stakeholders are now seeking to transform the challenge through closer collaboration between the civil registration and national identity management systems.
Under the proposed framework, the NPC would remain responsible for the registration of births and deaths, while NIMC would facilitate the linkage of registered births with the national identity database and the subsequent assignment of National Identification Numbers (NINs).
Local governments are also expected to play a major role by bringing registration services closer to families through ward and community-level registration centres.
The stakeholders further proposed the integration of birth registration into primary healthcare services, where mothers and newborns already interact with the health system.
Under the proposed approach, the birth notification issued at a health facility or through a community-based service would initiate the registration process. The child would then receive a birth certificate, while the registration record could be linked to the national identity system.
The approach is expected to reduce the burden on parents by eliminating the need for separate journeys to registration centres.
The partnership also involves UNICEF, which provides technical, financial and technological support, while Barnksforte Technologies Limited is supporting the development and deployment of the electronic civil registration and vital statistics system.
The stakeholders believe that integrating birth registration with primary healthcare could significantly improve registration coverage because health facilities are often the first formal point of contact between mothers, newborns and government services.
Beyond providing proof of birth, they said registration is critical to establishing a child’s legal identity.
Onoise explained that a birth record establishes key information about a child, including the child’s name, sex, date and place of birth, while also providing the foundation for recognition before the law.
He warned that children without legal identity documents may experience difficulties proving their age or identity and could face exclusion from education, healthcare, social protection and justice systems.
According to figures presented at the dialogue, an estimated 24.8 million Nigerian children under the age of five have been registered.
The stakeholders warned that children without legal identity documents may also be more vulnerable to child marriage, trafficking, child labour, abuse, exploitation and family separation.
Digitalisation, they said, would be another important component of the reforms.
Onoise explained that an interoperable digital civil registration system would allow registration information to be securely shared across relevant government systems while maintaining data protection and confidentiality.
Such a system, he said, would help reduce duplication, improve the quality of population data and make it easier to track a birth from initial notification through registration, certificate issuance and identity enrolment.
However, he acknowledged that significant gaps still exist in the implementation of the system.
He disclosed that health-facility interoperability had stalled in some locations, noting that none of the 371 targeted facilities was live at the time of the assessment.
He also said the birth notification pipeline had not recorded notifications during the reporting year.
Another concern was the significant disparity between the number of births registered and the number of certificates issued.
According to the figures presented, 443,162 registrations had been recorded, while only 120,469 birth certificates had been issued.
The UNICEF specialist stressed that government agencies alone cannot achieve universal birth registration, noting that parents and caregivers remain central to ensuring that children are registered promptly.
He urged parents to take advantage of registration opportunities available at health facilities, local government offices and community registration points.
He also called on traditional and religious leaders, women’s groups, young people and the media to intensify public awareness about the importance of birth registration.
Onoise further advocated stronger domestic financing for civil registration services, the recruitment of permanent registrars, improved coordination among relevant agencies and sustained community mobilisation.
He said the ultimate objective was to make birth registration a simple, accessible and routine process that begins from the moment a child enters the world.
The stakeholders maintained that ensuring every child has a recognised legal identity from birth would not only protect individual rights but also strengthen national planning by providing government with more accurate and timely population data for healthcare, education, social protection and other development programmes.
