The National Population Commission (NPC) has raised concerns over Nigeria’s low birth registration rate, revealing that only about 40 per cent of births in the country are currently registered.

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

Yusuf said more than five million children are born in Nigeria annually, stressing the need to expand civil registration services and bring them 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 greater community participation to close the registration gap.

Yusuf stressed that every birth, death and other vital event should be captured in the electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics system to enable the country build a complete and reliable national database.

Nigeria moves to digital birth registration

The NPC chairman 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 recording of vital events.

According to him, the digital platform would improve the security, efficiency, reliability and accessibility of civil registration while reducing duplication through automated verification and unique identifiers.

He said the system would also enable government to generate vital statistics faster, providing reliable demographic data for national planning, resource allocation, infrastructure development and social protection programmes.

Yusuf, however, acknowledged that technology alone would not solve Nigeria’s registration challenges.

He said the Commission was pursuing decentralisation and partnerships to take registration services closer to Nigerians, particularly those in rural and underserved communities.

The NPC chairman disclosed that the Commission signed 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 added that 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.

The approach, he said, would allow children to be registered as close as possible to the point of birth.

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

The Commission currently has more than 4,000 functional registration centres across the 774 local government areas and plans to expand the network to about 8,000 centres nationwide.

According to him, 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 excluded from the national database.

UNICEF seeks stronger birth registration system

The Chief Child Protection Officer at UNICEF, 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 described birth registration as more than an administrative procedure, stressing that it is a fundamental right of every child and often the first legal recognition provided 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 services 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.

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

UNICEF called for stronger integration of civil registration with health, identity management, social protection, education and justice systems, alongside further expansion of services to communities where families live.

NPC targets births outside health facilities

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

She disclosed that 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 expected to check whether children have birth certificates and facilitate registration where necessary.

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

She added that the NPC was developing a community birth alert system with support from UNICEF.

Under the initiative, traditional institutions, religious bodies, community-based organisations and other community structures would alert registrars whenever a birth occurred outside health facilities.

The system is intended to ensure that children born at home, in churches and other community locations are not left outside the civil registration system.

Adaku said the digital registration system had also helped reduce duplication, improve access to information and strengthen integration between birth registration and national identity systems.

She noted that once a birth is registered, the record can be linked with the individual’s National Identification Number, further strengthening Nigeria’s identity management architecture.

Yusuf urged 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 called on the media to intensify public enlightenment on the importance of birth and death registration.

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

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

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