56 percent of Nigerian children don’t exist legally

The Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Nasir Kwarra, has said not only 43 per cent of under-five children are registered at birth, in spite of 4011 registration centres across the nation.

Kwarra stated these while addressing reporters at the 2021 Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CR&VS) day in Abuja.

He added just 10 percent of deaths are also registered.

“What this translates into is that many are born and die without leaving a trace of their existence in any legal record in the country. This is attributable to a whole range of causative factors, including but not limited to geographic, cultural and traditional reasons.”

He however assure it is not about the commission.

“From its humble beginning of manual registration, the commission has carefully navigated initial teething challenges and is at the thick of an effective transformation from manual to wholly digitisation and automation of the CVRS system in Nigeria in an effort to revitalise and upgrade the system in line with the vision of the Africa Programme on Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics. With the support of World Bank and UNICEF, the commission developed a Five-Year Strategic Action Plan (2018-2022).

“The broad objective of the plan is to enhance the framework for actions and guidance for national, state, local government and community initiatives aimed at ensuring that all vital events are registered. Currently, the commission has 4011 registration centres spread across the 774 local government areas of the country.

The Chief, Child Protection of UNICEF in Nigeria, Ibrahim Sesay, also said children on the African continent have the lowest birth registration rate in the world with only 44 per cent of them registered at birth while millions of deaths go uncounted each year.

He said Nigeria alone accounts for 11 per cent of unregistered children in West Africa.

The agency chief said as Nigeria joined the rest of the World in commemorating Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day, it was addressing structural, normative and operational challenges to birth registration.