..We could do better if LASG plays its part

From the latest Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, MICS, the highest level of birth registration in Nigeria is in Lagos state with 94 per cent followed by the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja with 87 per cent. The 2021 MICS also revealed that the lowest birth registration levels are found in Jigawa and Sokoto states.

The report also showed that 3 per cent of children under the age of five who had their births registered do not have birth certificates.

Good Health Weekly sought views of the Head of Department, Vital Registration, National Population Commission, NPopC, Lagos State office, Mr Ikechukwu Nwannukwu, on how Lagos state became number one in birth registration nationwide and achieved above the national average. 

Excerpts:

Why birth registration is necessary

Birth registration has much importance and the basis is that birth registration gives a child an identity.  There is a slogan that a child that is not registered does not exist.  He or she does not exist because when they are planning for development, that child is not put into consideration in the planning.  So birth certificate gives a child the first identity in life.   That is the most basic importance of birth registration.

Upon this foundation, other benefits can be added. Secondly, birth registration is used for enrollment into school. For Lagos State, no child gets admission to any school without providing a birth certificate. Thirdly, it is also used when someone wants to get an international passport. The certificate is a defense because it stands against child trading.

The birth certificate also is a defense from child trading, because when you know the age of the child, it stands against child trafficking. The birth certificate stands against early marriage because we know that a child is not an adult until he or she is 18.  A child must be an adult to be able to decide on his own whether he is ripe for marriage or not.   It also help you to know your age group.

We have age groups in villages and the only evidence you have to show that you belong to that age group” is to show your birth certificate.  fall into that age range.

For Government

Birth certificate is a powerful tool for the government to plan. For example, if you have 500 children in a community and only 200 have birth certificates, if they want to set up a school there, they will set it up based on the number of children registered and you will then see that at the end of the day the schools will be inadequate, the same thing happens to social facilities and hospitals. For the government to plan effectively on where to site a hospital and the size of the hospital, it has to depend on the registered children.

Birth certificate also helps the government to determine where to set up all these social facilities. For example, if we have 500 children in Amuwo Odofin Local Government and then in Ikeja we have only 20, then it guides the government on where to set social facilities where we have more children.

Birth certificate is a powerful tool in planning.  It knows the number of people in each age bracket and knows the facilities to set for them.

To the parent, the birth certificate is important because that is the identity of their child and whatever the parent wants to file in to get for the child, it will needed.  So for the parents, it is important.

2021 MICS report

We have two types of birth registration. We have what we call the “active” and “passive” birth registration modern methods or systems.   In  Lagos state, we just realised that we have the population and major part of this population just like we are discussing do not even know what birth certificate is, not to talk about the benefits.

So once in a while we go on an active system of registration and we call it “birth registration mop-up” or “rapid birth registration” sponsored mainly by UNICEF.

Mop-up is  usually sponsored by UNICEF and we train and recruit what we call Adhoc Staff. They will go through the rudiment of filling Form B1. Form B1 is what we call the data information form, and it is data that will be generated from B1 that will be transferred to B2.  B2 is the birth certificate that they will now see and give to the child.

So what we do in Lagos, is that we do proposals to UNICEF, telling them that this Local government from the dashboard, you can see that we are registering this much, but that the gap between what is done and what is not done is still wide and that if we continue with passive system of registration, waiting for people to come to register,   that we may not then make any headway, so we will do our proposal to UNICEF if they approve we will gather people, we will recruit, train, and  then we will move them into the field.

We will go from house-to- house, carrying proper ID cards, introducing ourselves  that we are here on behalf of the National Population Commission and to give birth certificate to children who has not gotten.  So we keep registering like that, the last one we did was in August, we did in Alimosho, we registered 140, 000 children.

But it may shock you if I tell you that all the returns from all the whole local government areas in Lagos state if we are doing passive registration, that is staying in our office waiting for people to come to register, it may not be up to 40,000, but in Alimosho, we registered 154, 000 in 12 days. That is what has been keeping Lagos on top as regards birth registration.

Aggressive regsitratiion drive

As we are talking, we are doing birth registration mop up but this one is e-birth registration, we’re doing away with the analogue system. What we are doing now is that we train people to capture all the information in an android phone, iPhone or whatever device, then if they go to the field to study that application that has been configured into the phone, it is just to open the phone, ask questions and fill in the name and whatever and when you just click on it, it goes to the controller, when the controller approves the thing goes to the people that are printing the certificate and the certificate will be printed out.

So far so good, we have printed about 30,000 certificates since we started and then by Monday we will still continue. So we are shifting from analogue  to digital and all the same even at about 50,000 that we have registered, we are continuing.

In the last one month, in Lagos state, we are doing only five  Local Governments including Ikeja, Agege, Mainland, Oshodi Isolo and Kosofe. I’m sure before we finish these five  LGAs, we may be hitting 200,000 registrations. So that is the secret of why Lagos is always on the top because it requires hard work.

Some Heads of Department may not want to go through the stress, but we know the importance of birth certificates to children, and that is why we go out of our way to make sure that we do that much.

The UNICEF’s Child specialist, Sharon, was telling me when I was proposing that they should come to Lagos for this programme, they just said “HOD why are you worried, Lagos is in green (green means we are 70 per cent up by coverage), but the average coverage for the whole Nigeria is 47 per cent, so if it is 47 per cent, it means there are some states that will be like 17, some states will be 30 but together there’s more than that average.

So our secret is that we embark on both passive and active registration in Lagos state. Outside that, we make sure we go into publicity, public awareness and Advocacy. We always tell our registrants, and our controllers to keep in touch with the influential people in the society and the communities like the Baales, the Obas, and even the religious leaders whether a pastor or an Imam and tell them the importance of a birth certificate.

I know some places in Lagos where if you give birth if you carry the child to be named in a church they will demand that you should get a birth certificate first if you are doing postnatal if you come for postnatal they demand your birth certificate before they can attend to the child. If you want to be enrolled in a school in Lagos, you must get a birth certificate because they enrolled your, child, in a school. So all these measures put together are what is keeping Lagos afloat, above every other state.

LASG has not played its part

Actually, I will say no, the State government has not done anything for us. We have done so many proposals telling them that we should not be relying on UNICEF alone, the proposal I did, that I discussed with the honourable Federal Commissioner, I said if we can do active registration every two months, with two local governments, we will cover the whole local governments in a year and when we do that you will be surprised that even where we are now is nothing compared to what we would have gotten, but this year is gone now.

We did only Alimosho and these other five local governments. So out of the 20 LGAs, we did only six and imagine what would have come out from every other local government area that is left undone? We didn’t do Ikorodu, and Ikorodu is growing like a mini Lagos state. We didn’t do Ojo, if you open your dashboard you will see that the three local government areas that always interchange first, second and third are Alimosho, Ojo and Ikorodu.

It’s only Alimosho we did because I picked these five local governments that we are doing now, based on the judgment that we have not done mop up there for a long time. Last year, we did Ojo, Ikorodu, Ifako, and Amuwo Odofin and I got 595, 000 registrations from these five LGAs.

Challenges

But the application we are using now is really drawing us back because many of these volunteers find it difficult to input the data into the application and few of them are doing it, and once it will take you 10 minutes to write on paper, probably you would have finished like almost 10 form B1 in 10 minutes, and issue certificate is taking them at times five minutes to input for one child into the app,

So it’s really drawing us back. But I talked to Madam Sharon (UNICEF Child Specialist). She was in Lagos throughout the three days of exercise before all the challenges and I’ve decided and said “okay” to use form B1 and use the other one when they cannot build the other one. We will give you time later to input the ones they have done for B1.

But the summary is that we have not received any help from Lagos state.