OVER 17 MILLION NIGERIAN CHILDREN HAVE NO BIRTH CERTIFICATE, SAYS UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN’S FUND
‘India has the highest number of unregistered children with the margin of 71 million among the 10 countries with the largest number of unregistered children, while Nigeria follows with 17 million’,Oladiji said
“Ten countries will also contribute massively to the region’s immense population increase in absolute terms between 2015 and 2050. Nigeria is expected to contribute at least 257 million additional inhabitants; the possible consequence of a weak birth registration system is planning blindly, incapacity to generate relevant public health data and national estimate and population planning.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Child Protection Specialist described ignorance as a primary cause for non-registration and low level of public awareness on the importance of birth registration.
Penpushing further reports that the UNICEF specialist explained that the issue of unregistered children during birth in Nigeria was worrisome as it has a lot of implications in the country, adding that there should be an officer responsible for the registration of children immediately after birth in all local government areas across the country.
The specialist called on the media and influencer to start the campaign by ensuring the registration of at least 10 to 20 children daily in their communities, urging them to introduce special programmes, jingles and news sections aimed at educating, enlightening and informing the public, especially at the rural areas on the importance of birth registration.
“The waiver of fees was made in Nigeria as a result of low birth registration. Introducing fees will further limit the already low level of birth registration coverage,’’ she said.
Penpushing also reports that, Oladiji said that most children affected by low registration are mostly those of the poor parents, uneducated and leaving in slums, very rural and hard to reach communities, noting that these children will never be registered, counted or accounted for to access social services.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) however said that for birth registration to increase in Nigeria there should be establishment of a specific legal framework to govern the relationship between National Populations Commission (NPC) and Local Government Areas registration systems and to amend the Constitution to deal with the current parallel birth registration mandates and systems.
“Each LGA should be mandated to appoint at least 10 officers to register birth, traditional institutions should also use their influence to register births- mandatorily, NPC officials should be provided office spaces within the LGA offices with handheld devises to enable registering children and creating a data bank- but not necessarily issue a birth certificate’, she emphasised.
Penpushing also reports that, she noted that, others include: appropriate funding should consider workforce size, operational costs (such as transportation), infrastructure, monitoring and logistics costs- with the allocation arranged according to an assessment of need.
The official said rather than a standard payment to each state office, there should be an expansion of birth registration services in local government areas where existing capacity is too low to cover the designated catchment area or population: by expanding birth registration resources (funding personnel procurement of material infrastructure – office spaces and furniture, etc) and allocations to council areas with the highest catchment areas or populations.
