Follow Us on Google
Doris Obinna
Millions of women, men, boys and girls are denied basic services because of birth registration systems. Without a birth certificate, children are more vulnerable to child rights violations, which include child marriage, child labour and trafficking, and becoming child soldiers. This is even true in emergencies, where people without birth certificates become excluded from health coverage, access to education, and social protection programmes.
Birth registration is the official recording of a child’s birth by the government. It establishes the existence of a child under law and provides the foundation for safeguarding many of a child’s civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.
Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child specifies that every child has the right to be registered at birth, without any discrimination.
Birth registration is part of United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) four pillars of child rights programming i.e. survival, development, protection and participation.
To achieve birth registration for all children in Nigeria, UNICEF has been working with the Government of Nigeria to address systemic bottlenecks with a view to achieving sustainable results for children.
On this interview, state deputy director, National Population Commission (NPopC), Mr. Elias Nwanukwu, who is also presently, HOD, Registration Department, disclosed that with a total of 231,584 registration comprising 117,586 boys and 11,998 girls, Lagos had second highest number of birth registrations in the country in 2019 after Borno State and targets about one million birth registrations by the end of 2019.
What is the importance of birth registration?
Without identification, governments have no documentation of a child’s existence. As a result, the law is incapable of protecting children from crimes and abuse. But effective birth registration protects children and provides them with their legal rights.
For this reason, there is need to increase awareness concerning the importance of birth certificate and birth registration. So, we need the media to help us amplify our responsibilities and duties and why people should register their children because of the many benefits that are involved.
Your target of one million before the end of 2019 for Lagos, how viable?
Yes it is possible, though Lagos is a big city. So far, we have registered about three hundred and still counting. With media publicity, awareness campaign as well as engaging traditional rulers and religious leaders, I think we will get there, So far so good if you open the dash board you will see that back to one month ago the birth registration has increased.
How has the issue of funding affected your work?
Funding is an issue because we have only 122 registration centres in Lagos; we have about 15 in Alimosho Local Government, Alimosho return is more than the returns of some states put together so even if we have 50 registration centres in Alimosho alone, I think it is not too many.
So, if we have funds to establish more registration centers, we come down very close to the grass root, people may not be willing to enter bus to go and register somewhere far from their residence, but if the registration center is close to them they can just come there and register their baby. The truth is lack of fund has hampered so many things, because once we get a space we must get tables, chairs and other cabinets to work with, all these are what we needs to be funded.
Tell us about the budget you receive in a year and why you need it to be reviewed.
Well we receive budget from the Federal Government for Vital Record System (VRD) activities. But I think all those budgets does not trickle down to the state, at least I have been HOD for about four years now, we have not received any budget concerning VRS activity in Lagos State as much as I know.
Is there any role Lagos State Government is supposed to play in this issue of funding?
Yes! When former governor, Babatunde Fashola was there he was really helpful. He was paying some of the contract staff, but when he left and Akinwumi Ambode took over, he did not continue and was not helpful at all. I cannot remember anything he did for us. And now we have a new governor, we are still trying to visit him to tell him what we do and see how he can help us. Even when Fashola was there, I think Lagos State gave us some projects vehicles and they assist like UNICEF by printing our registration materials. For now, we have not been able to get help from the state.
What are the things you need to get to your target?
In Lagos, the target of one million is achievable, because of what is on ground now. We have had a programme in Ota where we brought in religious and traditional leaders from all over Lagos State as well as stakeholders to engage them and see how they can help us register children at the grassroot level because they are the ones close to them; in other words, they are the authority to their people.
If a traditional rulers calls a meeting and say this is what is on ground and say everybody must register their children it will holds. Awareness campaign by all is very necessary. Amongst us too, if somebody gives birth and calls you for dedication or naming ceremony, you should ask them if their child has a birth certificate if the answer is no, then you can educate the person on importance of birth registration.
My point is, the awareness campaign is for all and sundry. Also on our part, we are going to go into aggressive campaign, we are going to lunch out, go into active registration and I know that once we do that, we are likely to get more than.
Tell us about the illegal payment for registration. How do you think it can be handled?
It is one of the challenges we are facing in Lagos, reports reaching us is that, registrars have come to a point that no matter what you say or do if you do not pay, they cannot give you certificate. The truth is nobody will want to name or disclose for reasons best known to them. What I hear most often is, I will not be the one to sack this person from his/her work.
Now, tell me, how then do you want me to act? If I call somebody and say, I heard that you are collecting money, the first thing I have to do is to prove that he is collecting money. If he ask me how you got to know that I am collecting money and asked for prove, I should be able to say that somebody came and the person can attest before the registrar. Believe me, if we get such person, if he does not lose his job, it will be by God’s grace.
Do you mean that people should come up with evidence?
Exactl. If anyone comes up with evidence, then you are giving us the ground to act. You cannot say that somebody is a thief if there is no evidence that the person is a thief; so how are you going to persecute the person?
There are also challenges of people in the riverine areas; what are your plans in reaching out to people in the hinterland?
Well, the three months programs courtesy UNICEF, we are going to embark on, we will do a budget and all registrars are going to get a stipends of ten thousand naira (N10,000.00) in addition to their salary. This will enable them to move out so by the time we give this money out we expect the registrars, even if it is once a week to leave their office and go to this hinterlands, do as much as they can and come back.
In other words, there are always ways to go about it. They can go there and drop form B1 for the kids and teach them how to fill and say in the next two weeks I am coming to collect them. By the time you come back in the next two weeks they would have filled like two hundred form B1.
With the contract staff recruited, we can achieve that as we have done similar thing with those living in then Maroko village.
How do you ensure that all centres are posted to the dashboard?
The only way to resolve it is to talk to the controllers. We have held meeting with the state directors and I tell them not sit in the office. By the time they post to their centers they should not relax, they should look at all the registrars under them and monitor them strictly. If the person has not posted anything call the person and ask the person what the reason was.
Sometime, I was called in from Abuja to Ibadan that they are looking at our dash board that some centers have not posted since January and they have been registering.
I stand to argue it, because we get these figures, I think there was a time last year they gave Bornu target of registering three hundred thousand in six months so they came up in the fourth month that they are close to three hundred thousand, that in that six month, they are going to register more than three hundred thousand.
We did mop up in Lagos for four local governments alone for 20-days and we got three hundred thousand. So how do you reconcile it with the enumeration area demarcation (EAD). In all, state registrars need to be proactive and take charge in their centres to ensure that they are posted to the dash board.
