Health
Child registration is beneficial
By Punch Editorial Board
BIRTH registration is the gateway to other rights for every child. This cannot be overstated. It enables the government to plan better and ensure that every child counts.
Unfortunately, many people do not register their children at birth, notwithstanding its many advantages. This is more prevalent in rural areas and households with limited formal education.
Globally, the birth of over 150 million children under the age of five had reportedly never been officially recorded.
With only about half of children under five in sub-Saharan Africa registered at birth, African children are said to have the lowest birth registration rate in the world.
UNICEF and the National Population Commission estimated that Nigeria alone accounted for 11 per cent of unregistered children in West Africa. This is backward.
According to UNICEF, only about 43 per cent of over five million children born every year in Nigeria are registered on time. More than 50 per cent of the births of children under five remain unregistered.
The organisation noted that many parents delay registering their children because the weak systems in Nigeria still allow unregistered children to access some public services.
In a recent media dialogue on birth registration for journalists in South-West states and Edo, UNICEF Nigeria and the NPC pushed for digitised, universal birth registration for children under one year.
The dialogue, with the theme: “Giving Every Child a Legal Identity by Driving Birth Registration in Nigeria,” aimed to establish birth registration as a child’s first and fundamental right.
It unlocks access to education, health care, lifelong opportunities and social services, among others. It gives a legal identity to a child.
According to UNICEF’s Chief of Lagos Field Office, Celine Lafoucriere, civil registration is the child’s identity and the foundational right of every child.
“A registered child can access health services and, as an adult, will be able to vote, own property and inherit wealth,” she explained.
At the workshop, it was established that national under-five registration has risen to 57 per cent and that there are 3.5 million unregistered children across the South-West zone and Edo.
While 3.5 million children are unregistered in seven states, recent reports indicate that over 32 million children are not registered nationwide. This is unimaginable!
Cultural issues partly inhibit people from registering at birth and immunising. Even some faith-based organisations are ignorant and teach their members the wrong ideas.
There should be a sustained campaign to create awareness about birth registration. The media, civil society organisations, and traditional and religious leaders are very important in eliminating cultural and geographic hurdles to registration.
The government should move into public hospitals to register children. It can use hospitals to get the data on children because most births occur in hospitals. The data will allow the country to plan better.
Invariably, every Nigerian should have a legal identity. Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that every child has the right to be registered at birth. This is without any discrimination.
Local government ministries should be on top of this registration issue. They should reach out to all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria to get people to register their children.
The government can give incentives to parents. This will go a long way in pushing them to register their children.
Gladly, NPC’s current administrative data indicates that digital birth registration services are now available in over 6,000 of Nigeria’s 8,809 wards.
Also, targeted registration efforts are said to have reached more than 14.5 million children.
More efforts should be made to deploy technology to make the process more accessible.
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