The Lagos State Director of the National Population Commission (NPC), Abiola Kekere-Ekun, has called for stronger advocacy, wider public awareness and greater cooperation from schools, healthcare providers and other stakeholders to ensure that every child born in Nigeria is captured in the country’s civil registration system.
Kekere-Ekun said the Commission was targeting 100 per cent birth registration by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target on legal identity for all, and expressed optimism that the transition from manual to fully digital registration would accelerate progress towards achieving the target.
Speaking at a two-day birth registration media dialogue in Lagos, organised by the NPC in collaboration with UNICEF, the Lagos NPC Director said the Commission now operates a largely digital system covering birth and death registration, birth certificates, and related processes.
According to him, the success of the registration drive depends not only on the NPC but also on stakeholders’ ability to educate parents and communities about the importance of registering every child.
“Every child must be counted,” Kekere-Ekun said, stressing that a child without a birth certificate risks being effectively invisible to government because such a child may not be properly captured in population statistics or adequately planned for.
He said accurate registration enables the government to determine the number of people within its jurisdiction and to plan appropriately for education, healthcare, and other essential services.
Kekere-Ekun said the Commission had moved from a predominantly manual system for birth attestation, death registration and birth certificates to full digitalisation.
According to him, the transition provides an opportunity to expand registration coverage and improve the efficiency of civil registration services.
He disclosed that the Commission’s projection for 2024 put birth registration coverage at 54 per cent, adding that the NPC was focused on expanding coverage from that level and accelerating progress in the coming years, with the ultimate goal of achieving universal birth registration by 2030.
The Lagos NPC Director said the Commission needed partners who could take the message beyond government offices and into communities, particularly areas where parents may not fully understand the significance of birth registration.
Kekere-Ekun said the media could help explain the consequences of failing to register children and encourage parents to obtain proper documentation, noting that more extensive mobilisation was required to reach communities in the “nooks and crannies” of society.
He stressed that parents should not assume that giving birth in a hospital or obtaining a document from a healthcare facility automatically completes the legal registration process. He drew attention to the distinction between documentation issued by healthcare facilities and official civil registration conducted through the National Population Commission.
He said some parents believe that receiving a document from a hospital or maternity facility means the child has been fully registered, warning that this could create difficulties later when children require official proof of identity.
The Lagos NPC Director called for stronger involvement of private healthcare facilities in birth registration, noting that private hospitals and maternity centres play an important role because many births take place outside government-owned health facilities.
Kekere-Ekun supported calls for stronger legal provisions making it a clear responsibility of private healthcare facilities to ensure that births occurring on their premises are registered with the NPC.
He suggested that relevant authorities could consider legislation requiring private facilities to make birth registration part of their responsibilities whenever a child is born under their care.
According to him, such an approach would help close gaps created when parents leave healthcare facilities with only facility-issued documentation and fail to complete the official civil registration process.
Kekere-Ekun said that although birth registration is recognised as an obligation, the system does not currently provide a sufficiently strong enforcement mechanism to compel parents to obtain the official birth certificate before leaving a healthcare facility.
He argued that this was one reason some children remain outside the formal registration system even after being born in recognised health facilities.
The Director said government could examine ways of strengthening compliance so that birth registration becomes an integral part of the process surrounding childbirth.
Kekere-Ekun also highlighted the role of schools in ensuring that children possess proper birth registration documents, but said compliance remained a challenge, particularly among some private schools.
According to him, some schools may be reluctant to insist on birth certificates because they fear that parents could be discouraged from enrolling their children if additional documentation is required.
He urged schools and other education stakeholders to look beyond immediate financial considerations and recognise the wider national importance of ensuring that children are properly documented.
He said stronger compliance by schools would contribute to Nigeria’s efforts to achieve the SDG target on legal identity for all.