Only 40% Of Nigerian Births Registered, NPC Raises Alarm

The National Population Commission (NPC) has raised the alarm over Nigeria’s huge birth registration gap, saying only about 40 per cent of births in the country are currently registered.

NPC Chairman, Dr Aminu Yusuf, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja at a media briefing to commemorate the 2026 Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Day.

Yusuf said more than five million children are born in Nigeria annually, stressing that the low registration coverage made it urgent to take civil registration services closer to communities.

“According to the most recent Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, only about 40 per cent of births are registered, while death registration coverage remains unacceptably low,” he said.

He said the situation required stronger partnerships, sustained public awareness and increased community participation to accelerate registration coverage.

According to him, every birth, death and other vital event must be captured in the electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics system for Nigeria to develop a complete and reliable national database.

Yusuf said Nigeria’s transition to a fully digital CRVS system on July 1, 2026, through the VitalReg platform, marked the end of manual registration and a major shift in the way vital events are recorded across the country.

He said the digital system had improved the security, efficiency, reliability and accessibility of civil registration, while reducing duplication through automated verification and unique identifiers.

The NPC chairman added that the system would enable government to generate vital statistics more quickly, providing reliable demographic data for national planning, resource allocation, infrastructure development and social protection programmes.

However, he stressed that technology alone would not close the registration gap, explaining that the Commission was pursuing decentralisation and partnerships to take services to Nigerians at the grassroots.

Yusuf disclosed that the Commission entered into a Partnership Compact Agreement in January 2025 with the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), UNICEF and Bankforte Technologies Limited to decentralise civil registration, improve interoperability and expand access to digital registration.

He said the NPC was also working with the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), state governments and health institutions to integrate birth registration into routine health services, allowing children to be registered as close as possible to the point of birth.

Yusuf said about 4,000 of the country’s 8,809 wards had already been reached with digital civil registration services under the Partnership Compact, with efforts ongoing to extend coverage to all wards.

The Commission, he added, currently has more than 4,000 functional registration centres across the 774 local government areas and is expanding the network to approximately 8,000 centres nationwide.

He said the expansion, combined with the VitalReg platform, would reduce the distance, cost and delays associated with registration and help prevent children and other vital events from being left outside the national database.

Yusuf called on state and local governments, traditional and religious institutions, health facilities, civil society organisations, development partners and the private sector to support the reform.

He also urged the media to intensify public enlightenment on the importance of birth and death registration, stressing that civil registration goes beyond a legal requirement.

“Civil registration is not merely a legal obligation but the foundation of legal identity, access to services, the protection of rights and national development,” Yusuf said.

The 2026 Africa CRVS Day is being commemorated under the theme: “New CRVS Decade (2026–2036): Consolidating the Gains of APAI-CRVS and Securing the Future of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics in Africa through Integration, Decentralization and Digitalization.”

Yusuf said Nigeria’s digital transition aligned with the continental agenda and reaffirmed the Commission’s commitment to building an integrated, decentralised and technology-driven registration system.

He said the ultimate objective was to ensure that every Nigerian is counted and every vital event is recorded.

Earlier, UNICEF Chief Child Protection Officer, Natalie McCauly, called for stronger integration, decentralisation and digitalisation of Nigeria’s civil registration system to ensure that every child is registered at birth and recognised before the law.

McCauly said birth registration was not merely an administrative procedure but a fundamental right of every child and often the first legal recognition accorded to a child by the state.

She said a birth certificate provides proof of identity and forms the foundation for access to healthcare, education, social protection, child protection and legal protection throughout a person’s life.

UNICEF acknowledged progress made by Nigeria in expanding birth registration through collaboration among the NPC, NIMC, ALGON, development partners and communities.

The organisation said digital birth registration services were now available in more than 4,000 wards, while targeted interventions had reached millions of children, including those in rural, hard-to-reach and humanitarian settings.

However, UNICEF warned that many children remained at risk of growing up without proof of legal identity.

It called for stronger integration of civil registration with health, identity management, social protection, education and justice systems, as well as the expansion of services to communities where families live.

Also speaking, Deputy Director, Civil Registration, NPC, Obodo Adaku, said the Commission was leveraging health facilities and community structures to improve birth registration coverage.

She said the NPC was working with the NPHCDA to make birth registration part of routine immunisation services at government health facilities.

According to her, nurses at immunisation points are now expected to check whether children have birth certificates and facilitate registration where necessary.

She said the Commission had also built the capacity of about 4,000 community-level registrars through the ALGON-supported partnership to conduct birth registration across wards.

Adaku said the Commission was developing a community birth alert system, with UNICEF support, through which traditional institutions, religious bodies, community-based organisations and other community structures would alert registrars whenever a birth occurred outside health facilities.

She said the initiative was aimed at ensuring that births occurring in homes, churches and other community locations were not excluded from the civil registration system.

Adaku further disclosed that the digital system had helped the Commission reduce duplication, improve access to information and strengthen integration between birth registration and national identity systems.

She said once a birth was registered, the record could be linked with the individual’s National Identification Number (NIN), strengthening the country’s identity management architecture.