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From Abdulrazaq Mungadi, Gombe
The National Population Commission (NPC) has lamented the dearth of birth registration, stating that only 127,305 childbirths were registered and issued with a birth certificate from January to November 2021 in Gombe state.
According to the commission, there is a large chunk of children not registered and not having a birth certificate in the country. This was disclosed by Mr Adedeji Rufai Adeniyi, the Head of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics of the NPC.
Addressing newsmen in Gombe, Mr Adedeji said, “It is not enough for any parent to bring a child into the world and not register that child. To you, he or she is existing, but is he or she existing to the government, no”.
He added stating that the NPC has been trying to preach the ills of not registering a child, “whenever you give birth to any child take the next step after the christening, after naming, go and obtain a birth certificate for him or her”
He explained that government can only plan for registered children, not unregistered ones. “A typical example, in community A, 20 thousand children were given birth to, five thousand were registered. In community B, 10 thousand children were given birth to and the 10 thousand children were registered.
Now, somebody that has 20 thousand children, but registered 5 and 10 thousand children that registered them all, who do you think the government is going to take care of more. But those with 20 thousand but registered 5 thousand children will start crying foul that they have more children than these 10 thousand people.
“Yeah! you have more children. Did you get them registered, does the government have their record, you see this is how we shoot ourselves,” Mr Adedeji said.
Speaking on the situation in Gombe state, Mr Adedeji noted that the state is not doing badly in terms of birth registration. However, he stated that there is room for improvement.
He said, “In the last meeting we held with UNICEF, we were in the middle. We were neither there nor here”.
According to him, Gombe has so far registered 37,870 under one-year-old children and a total of 68,727 under-five children as well as 20,708 children above 18 years old.
