About 3.5 million children across seven South-West states remain without official birth registration, leaving them without legal identity and making them effectively invisible to government planning and intervention programmes, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said.
UNICEF consequently charged journalists covering Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti and Edo states to intensify reporting and advocacy on birth registration, particularly for children under one year.
Chief of UNICEF Lagos Field Office, Celine Lafoucriere, gave the charge Tuesday in Lagos at a two-day media dialogue on birth registration organised by the National Population Commission (NPC) in collaboration with UNICEF.
The dialogue, attended by 50 journalists from the South-West, including Edo state, was designed to strengthen media advocacy and public awareness on the importance of registering children at birth.
Lafoucriere said, “the media must move beyond reporting statistics and tell the stories of children and families whose access to essential services and rights could be affected by the absence of birth registration.
”Many parents were still unaware that birth registration is free, could be completed at nearby health facilities and it is increasingly available through digital devices deployed within communities.”
She described birth registration as more than the acquisition of a certificate, stressing that it provides children with legal identity and helps facilitate access to essential services and rights.
The UNICEF official however, acknowledged progress in the region, particularly in Lagos state, which she said, in collaboration with the National Population Commission (NPC) and the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), was among the first States in the South to formally launch birth registration for children under one.
She also described the integration of the National Identification Number (NIN) into the birth registration process as a significant step forward.
On his part, the Lagos state Director of NPC, Kekere-Ekun Abiola, called on journalists to intensify advocacy for birth registration, declaring that every child must be officially counted to enable government plan effectively for the nation’s development.
Abiola explained that the commission has fully embraced digitalisation, making it necessary for journalists to use digital platforms and other media channels to reach more Nigerians with information on birth registration.