Funmi Ogundare in Lagos and Fidelis David in Ondo
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), yesterday warned that children without birth registration could face difficulties accessing education, healthcare and social protection, while the consequences could extend into adulthood, affecting their ability to vote and inherit property.
The Chief of Field Office, Lagos, Celine Lafoucriere, who made this known at a two-day media dialogue on birth registration organised by the National Population Commission (NPC) in collaboration with UNICEF, stressed that legal identity was a foundational right of every child and critical to accessing essential services throughout life.
According to her, birth registration provides the identity through which children can be recognised by government and included in planning and social protection programmes.
Lafoucriere disclosed that about 3.5 million children in Nigeria remained without birth registration, warning that their absence from official records could have serious implications for government planning, budgeting and the delivery of social protection interventions.
She said children who were not registered were effectively excluded from the social register, making it difficult for government to adequately account for them when designing and funding programmes.
“If your child doesn’t have an identity, he or she does not exist on the social register,” she stated.
Lafoucriere explained that government social protection programmes were often funded based on population figures captured in official records, meaning that unregistered children could be left out of budgetary considerations.
She said UNICEF was working closely with the Nigerian government to strengthen the social register and improve the implementation of social protection programmes, noting that universal birth registration was essential to achieving the objective.
The UNICEF official also urged journalists to intensify public awareness on the importance of birth registration, particularly among vulnerable families and communities where misconceptions about the process persist.
She challenged the media to tell the stories of children and families affected by the lack of birth registration, noting that journalists were closest to communities and could help parents understand the importance of registering their children.
“You are the closest to the families. You are the ones who tell the stories the way they are,” she stated.
Lafoucriere said parents needed to know where and how to register their children, noting that registration could be carried out at designated points and equipped community locations.
She stressed that birth registration should not be regarded merely as an administrative exercise but as the first step towards ensuring that every child could enjoy other fundamental rights.
“We count on you. We cannot work without you,” she said, urging journalists to work with UNICEF and government to ensure that every Nigerian child was registered at birth.
She maintained: “stronger birth registration would enable government to better plan and allocate resources while ensuring that no child was excluded from essential services and social protection programmes.
In his remarks, the Lagos State Director of the National Population Commission, Abiola Kekere-Ekun, urged the media to go beyond reporting population statistics and government activities by taking the message of birth registration directly to parents and caregivers in communities.
Kekere-Ekun said journalists had a critical role to play through sustained advocacy, sensitisation and public enlightenment, while also holding government agencies and other stakeholders accountable for ensuring that birth registration services were accessible and efficiently delivered.
He noted that accurate birth registration was also vital to effective governance, stressing that reliable demographic data would enable government to determine the number and distribution of children and plan adequately for education, healthcare, social protection and other essential services.
Also speaking, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, Denis Onoise, explained that birth certificates were essential legal documents that establish a child’s identity and recognition before the law.
He stated that civil registration and legal identity systems generate records required by law and provide vital information such as a person’s name, gender, place and date of birth for use by government and private institutions.
Onoise added that the system also provides continuous data for planning, monitoring and evaluating government programmes in critical sectors including social protection, healthcare, education and housing.
“Establishing and maintaining an effective civil registration and legal identity system remained primarily the responsibility of government.”
The UNICEF identified inadequate registration centres, long distances to service points, language barriers, inefficient registration processes and insufficient financial, human and material resources as major obstacles to universal birth registration.
According to him, the challenges are worsened by direct and indirect costs, including registration fees, transportation expenses, time taken away from work and repeated trips to obtain certificates, particularly for low-income families and people living in hard-to-reach communities, including Ese-Odo and Ilaje council areas of Ondo State.