|
The Lagos State government
has stepped up efforts to register children from birth even as it has been
mandated by the National Population Commission (NPopC) to register 1 million
children by the end of the year.
With a total of 231,584
registrations comprising 117,586 boys and 113,998 girls, Lagos had the 2nd highest
number of birth registrations in the country in 2018 after Borno State.
The Lagos State 2019
report shows that the worst-performing Local Government Areas (LGAs) are Epe
with 28,817 registrations, Lagos Island 28,579 registrations, and Ibeju- Lekki
with 18,346 registrations.
In 2018, the
worst-performing LGAs were Ajeromi/Ifelodun with 34 percent, Lagos mainland
with 36 percent and Mushin with 41 percent birth registration.
In the views of UNICEF
Child Protection Specialist, Mrs. Sharon Oladiji, “Birth registration is the
first step towards recognizing a child’s inalienable right as a human being,
but in Lagos state, this is failing to meet their right to an identity, name and
nationality.”
Oladiji who spoke during a
two-day media workshop organized by the National Orientation Agency (NOA) in
collaboration with UNICEF, on the need to scale up birth registration in Lagos
State decried the threat to the rights of over 1.4 million children in the
state, even as she called for expansion of birth registration services in all LGAs
with prioritization of interventions to accelerate progress, especially amongst
the poor in rural areas and among socially disadvantaged groups.
“ When a child is not
registered, there is no official record of his/her full names and that child
will not have access to basic services,” said the Head of Department, Vital
Registration Department, National Population Commission, NPoPC Lagos State, Mr.
Nwannukwu Ikechukwu.
He said to scale up the
number of registered births in Lagos, the Commission plans to create an
additional 26 centres across the state.
Nwannukwu blamed
the low birth registration rate in the State to myriads of challenges including
lack of suitable offices for comptrollers and registrars; touting of birth and
death certificate; the unhealthy rivalry between Lagos state council staff and
NPoPC registrars among others.
He urged the State government
to employ more ad hoc registrars, to enable the commission to cover more areas,
especially in hard to reach communities within the state.
On his part, Lagos State
Director, National Orientation Agency, NOA, Mr. Waheed Ishola, who noted that
the media was critical in the scaling up of birth registration, appealed to
media practitioners to buy into the programme and help create awareness on the
project.
Provisions in the current
legislation for birth registration make it mandatory. The Federal Government’s
decree No. 69 of 1992 on vital registration states that registration shall be
carried out free of charge, within a period of 60 days from the date of birth.
Birth registration is the
continuous, permanent, compulsory and universal recording of the occurrence and
characteristics of birth. The exercise is free nationwide for children aged
0-17 years.
Information from
RapidSMS, a data tracking tool that
collects and collates real-time information using Short Messaging System
(SMS), in 2018, 175,912 children under
one year were registered comprising 86,497 girls and 89,415 boys while 308,529
Under fives comprising 155,031 girls and 253,497 boys were registered.
For 2017, the
State registered 211,312 children under age one, 103,801 girls and 307,509
boys, under five 338,195, while for girls 165,611 and 072, 585 for boys.
In 2016,
a total of 197,814 children were registered (101,157 boys and 96,657 girls). Under
fives registered were 321,228 (157,081 girls and 64,148 boys), while
In 2015, Lagos State
registered 176,533 children under the age of one, comprising 87,693 girls and
88,840 boys while for the Under fives, 236, 592 children were registered made
up of 117,041 girls and 119,551 boys.
No comments:
Post a Comment