Mr. Daniel Okunbo, 35, a Nigerian, was born without any form of identification. He laments how lack of birth registration at birth almost ruined his life. Mr. Okunbo recalled how he spent most of his life without an official identity, until few years ago. According to him, his parents never got a birth certificate for him; but told him that the year Alhaji Shehu Shagari was sworn in as the first President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was when they gave birth to him. That’s how he knew about his year of birth.

His woes increased when he realized that without any official identity he could not secure a job in a firm as a security guard or a driver. He was glad to have the permanent voter’s card and other forms of identification that helped him secure admission to secondary school for his 10-year-old brilliant daughter, after she passed the Lagos State common entrance examination into public secondary school.

Thousands of Nigerians are believed to be in the same situation as Daniel. Birth registration is the official recording of the birth of a child through an administrative process of the state and is coordinated by a particular branch of government. It’s a permanent and official record of a child’s existence - evidenced by a birth certificate. A birth certificate records the full names, the parents, place of birth, date of birth and nationality.

According to the United Nations, civil registration system is the conventional data source for generating continuous and complete vital statistics on a permanent basis (UNECA, 2012). An efficient CRVS helps to create an inclusive society, protecting human rights, ensuring proper delivery of public service and good governance.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has done tremendously well to scale up birth registration in Lagos State. It sponsors and organises seminars and conferences for organisations and government agencies; collaborating with National Population Commission (NPC) , Ministry of Health, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Ministry of Information and Culture, among others.

A special attention is required for under-five children in Nigeria. This number of children is projected to increase from 32 million in 2015 to 58 million by 2050. A huge percentage of children in Lagos State do not have their births registered. The implication is that there is no official record of their full names, parents, place of birth, date of birth and their nationality of the Nigerian child. This results in the inability to properly plan the nation’s economic and social development in line with the population growth rate due to extremely low-level of birth registration in the country.

On the critical issue of Promoting Birth Registration in Lagos, the National Orientation Agency in collaboration with UNICEF Abuja Office, recently organised an interactive session for Lagos media, at the neighbouring city of Ibadan. Some of the points treated included how to overcome the challenges of effective uptake of birth registration, with the aim of changing the narrative.

UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, Mrs. Sharon Oladiji, in her presentation highlighted the cost of not registering ones child at birth, as their access to basic services is under threat. Because they are not officially registered, the children are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. In legal terms, they do not exist. A violation of their right goes unnoticed.

The benefits of Birth Certificate to the individual include providing legal and documentary evidence to certify a person’s existence, age, parentage, birth place, and nationality. It enables a person’s eligibility for health-care, admission into schools, voting, obtaining a passport, employment, marriage, etc. Also, it checks incidence of child abuse, child trafficking, early marriages, child labour, unlawful detention, etc. Records of deaths/death certificates provide legal evidence to inheritance of property and the rights of surviving spouses to re-marry. It is critical for the children in Lagos State: survival, health, education, social service initiatives and development goals.

The positive impact of birth/death certificate to the society also provides: Data on fertility and mortality disaggregated by age and gender;

Data on causes of death;

Relative impact of specific diseases on mortality, which can lead to policy interventions;

Data for planning in health, education, social security, insurance, etc.

It also provides indicators for monitoring population dynamics and development goals.

During the two-day media dialogue, Blessing Ejiofor, Communication Officer, UNICEF; Nwannukwu Elias Ikechukwu, deputy HOD, Vital Registration Department, NPOPC, Mr. Waheede Ishola, State Director NOA, Onche Odeh among other resource persons, exhaustively spoke on various subjects, especially assistance of the UNICEF in printing registration materials: birth certificates, Form B1, Birth and death registers. The good news, however, is that since UNICEF stepped into the printing of registration materials, Nigerian Population Commission, Lagos State, has not experienced scarcity of materials.

For every child to be identified and cared for, there is need for more awareness and the relevant agencies, including the media, need to hype their game in terms of advocacy, funding, and otherwise, to support the nation.

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