United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said that despite the birth registration uptake in Nigeria, it has been less than optimal, depriving Nigerian children the basic rights recognised by both the UN and the Nigerian Government.
According to UNICEF, if Nigeria must meet Social Development (SD) 16.9, it is imperative that concerted efforts are required to address all the outstanding barriers that have restricted universal birth registration in Nigeria.
This is just as the body added that millions of children, under 1 year of age either born within the communities or those accessing the formal health system to receive vaccines, are missing out on opportunities to be registered at health facilities.
Making this known on Friday in Kano, at a media dialogue on birth registration, Chief UNICEF filed office Kano, Rahama Farah, noted that “If the births of eligible children are not registered, it deprives the Nigerian child a right to a formal identity. Legally speaking, that child becomes invisible and does not exist”.
Birth registration is therefore a significant right which the Nigerian government has covenanted to accord her children.
“Yet, Article 7 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), specifies that every child has a right to a name and nationality. Article 7 also prescribes that children must be registered when they are born and given a name which is officially recognized by the government.”
According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2021, only 54.6 per cent of the under five children births are registered in Kano State, compared to 57. 3 per cent at the national level.
In Katsina and Jigawa states, under-five birth Registration is as low as 23.6 percent in Jigawa, and 67 per cent, in Katsina state.
The MICS 2021 survey also found that 2 out of every 3 mothers and caregivers of children aged below five years, whose births were not registered, did not know how to register their children.
The MICS 2021 puts percentage of children under 5 whose births are registered as ranging from as high as 89 per cent for the richest wealth quintile, to as low as 33 per cent for the poorest wealth quintile.
He added that the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Population Prospects 2019, about 20,000 children are born every day in Nigeria, and that the 2023 projected population for children under 1 year is 7,465,417: and the children under 5 is 35,597,131.
To ensure that the birth of every child in Nigeria is registered, UNICEF is supporting the Government in strengthening coverage of birth registration during immunization services in health facilities, capturing children who are under one year of age as soon as they are born, during Maternal and New-born Child Health Weeks (MNCHWs), and through Supplemental Immunization Activities, using digitalized processes.
The National Population Commission (NC) is the Nigerian agency assigned the statutory responsibility of documenting vital statistics which includes registering births of children in Nigeria, and only birth certificates issued by the NPC are recognized by law.
Speaking on the occasion, the National Population Commission Director ( NPC)state Director, Alhaji Ismaila Al-Hassan Dogo, the NPC is noted for census exercise.
“When you say census, you are counting people, which shouldered with registration of birth, it based on this the body would project the figure for the country, local government or the state.
“To enable the country know the population figure of the nation, to know the identity, where he or she belongs to, and failure for people not to have the certificate such a person does not recognised as a citizen of that very country, hence the need for a bonafide citizen to have a birth certificate.”
However, based on the road plan the UNICEF introduced, the body targeted about one million unregistered children in Kano, from zero to five years for the 44 local government areas of the State.
“The essence is that if we can get these children registered, they will be added to the database of Kano state population.
“Similarly, this exercise is being done in other 21 states of the country, noting that all the states that were targeted for this exercise in the 22 States
“Therefore, at the end of the exercise, all unregistered children would now be registered, thus taking care of backlog in the registration.”
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