The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has advocated for digital birth registration for children in Nigeria.
The Chief of UNICEF Field Office for South-West, Celine Lafoucriere said this at a two-day media dialogue on e-birth registration on Tuesday in Lagos.
The media dialogue was organised by UNICEF in collaboration with the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development and National Population Commission (NPC), Lagos Office.
The event has as its theme “A media dialogue to drive E-birth registration in South-West Nigeria”.
Lafoucriere said that e-birth registration was important to give every child the right to have the identity that he or she deserves.
She said that the e-birth registration was very important to national planning and development in the country.
Lafoucrier said that e-birth registration should be a right of every child from birth.
She said that once the target of e-registration was met, it would be a game changer for Nigeria and help the government to generate valid statistics for planning.
“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,” she said.
In his presentation, Denis Onoise, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, said that NPC was targeting more than nine million birth registrations for children under five years and four million registrations for children under one year.
Onoise said that to achieve proper e-registration for children in the country, there was a need to partner with primary health centres.
The UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, however, said that the available statistics show that people in the rural areas registered their children during birth (78.90 per cent) than those in the urban areas (44.8 per cent).
Onoise said that the integration of birth registration with the National Identification Number (NIN) would go a long way in providing adequate data in the country.
According to him, there are 4,000 registration centres across the 774 local government areas of the country.
In his remarks, Mr Bamidele Sadiku, NPC, Lagos State Director, said that the e-birth registration platform would provide better lives for Nigerians and prevent double birth and death registrations in the country.
The NPC boss also said that the commission was planning 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 Economic and Financial Crimes Commission 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 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,” he said.
Also, Mrs Toyin Oke, Permanent Secretary, Lagos Ministry of Youth and Social Development, said the state government was doing everything possible to secure the future of the children with e-birth registration.
Represented by Mrs Adeola Olabisi, the Director of Public Finance in the ministry, Oke said the media was very important in the drive for e-birth registration in the country.
