The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has advocated for digital birth registration for children in Nigeria.
Celine Lafoucriere, Chief of UNICEF Field Office for South-West, said this at a two-day media dialogue on e-birth registration on Tuesday in Lagos, the media dialogue was organized 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 an identity that he or she deserve.
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 government to generate valid statistics for planning.
“It is important to give every child an identity and this can be achieved through the registration.
“E-registration is important to generate statistics for effective planning. If adequate statistics is not available, 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 the need to partner with primary health centrcs.
The UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, however, said that the available statistics shows that people in the rural areas registered their children during birth (with 78.90 per cent) than those in the urban areas (with 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 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 National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to link both registrations with the NIN.
“From time to time, we receive complaint 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 registration, 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.