UNICEF advocates e-birth registration in Nigeria

The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has advocated for digital birth registration for children in Nigeria.
Celine Lafoucriere, Chief of UNICEF Field Office for South-West, said this at a two-day media dialogue on e-birth registration on Tuesday in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the media dialogue was organised by UNICEF in collaboration with the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development and National Population Commission (NPC), Lagos Office.
The event has as its theme: “A media dialogue to drive E-birth registration in South-West Nigeria”.
Lafoucriere said that e-birth registration was important to give every child the right to have an identity that he or she deserve.
According to Lafoucriere, e-birth registration is very important to national planning and development, adding that it should be a right of every child from birth.
She said that once the target of e-registration was met, it would be a game changer for Nigeria and help government to generate valid statistics for planning.
“It is important to give every child an identity and this can be achieved through the registration.
“E-registration is important to generate statistics for effective planning. If adequate statistics is not available, government might not be able to adequately plan for children,” she said.
In his presentation, Denis Onoise, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, said that NPC was targeting more than nine million birth registrations for children under five years and four million registrations for children under one year.
Onoise said that to achieve proper e-registration for children in the country, there was the need to partner with primary health centres.(NAN)