The National Population Commission (NPC) has raised the alarm over Nigeria’s birth registration data, noting that 60% of births in the country go registered.
NPC chairman, Dr Aminu Yusuf, disclosed this 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 the need to bring 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 improve registration coverage.
According to him, every birth, death and other vital event must be captured in the electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics system to enable Nigeria 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 how vital events are recorded.
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.
He, however, stressed that technology alone would not close the registration gap, noting 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.
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.
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.
(Ripples)