By Fortune Eromosele, Abuja

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will on Wednesday (November 8th 2023), launch the electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System, CRVS and the Geospatial Data Repository.

CRVS as defined by the World Health Organization, is a system that registers all births and deaths, issues birth and death certificates, and compiles and disseminates vital statistics, including cause of death information. It also records marriages and divorces.

While Geospatial is a broad term that includes various types of geographic imagery and mapping technology. In other words, the records in this type of information set have coordinates, an address, city, postal code, or zip code included with them.

With the efforts of the National Population Commission to digitalise the CRVS, the Commission at a briefing in Abuja on Monday, announced the presidential launch to hold at the State House Conference Center, Abuja.

Addressing newsmen, Chairman of the NPC, Nasir Isa-Kwarra, said digitalising the process was part of Nigeria’s way of complying with the resolutions of the African Ministers and scaling up the automated process in Nigeria.

He said, “As it is the tradition with the Commission, it has become imperative to start this very important epoch-making event with a press briefing to among other things apprise members of the press and the general public of the newly introduced transformative and digitized process and its importance to the civil registration and vital statistics process in our dear country.

“Being the veritable organ for information dissemination and moulding of public opinion, it is our hope that the media will be in the vanguard of the efforts to inform and educate the general populace on the essence and importance of this new electronic Civil Registration and Vital Registration System as well as the Geospatial repository database and its link to the ECVRS.

“During the Sixth Session of Conference of African Ministers responsible for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CVRS) held at the United Nations Conference Centre in Addis Ababa from 24th to 27th October 2022, African Ministers made several resolutions and encouraged all countries in the continent to automate the CRVS process and ensure the implementation of the United Nations Legal Identity Agenda. Member States were further encouraged to develop an electronic technology driven system to boost data generation and civil statistics.

“As part of Nigeria’s way of complying with the resolutions of the African Ministers and scaling up the automated process in Nigeria, the National Population Commission in collaboration with UNICEF developed the eCRVS Operational Readiness Assessment Report showing the potential of digital technologies in providing transformative outcomes in CRVS and integrating data from multiple systems to securely store data at scale, in a cost-effective way in Nigeria.

“The report provided the holistic approach to the future state vision for digitized CRVS, the roll out of a decentralized digital birth registration system as part of CRVS, and identified areas to strengthen the automation of the system. Recommendations that will significantly increase the likelihood to reach a universal digitalized birth registration system in Nigeria were made.

“The report ushered in the bold step taken by the Commission for a transformative innovation of the CRVS (Vital Reg) system by developing a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement between the Commission and Barnksforte Technologies Limited, a reputable, and innovative indigenous ICT solution provider with a track record of success in ICT solution provision with government agencies.

“The PPP arrangement is to promote the Vital Reg System as a complete electronic system that digitalizes all civil registrations such as birth registration, stillbirth registration, birth attestation, adoption, marriage notification, divorce notification, migration and death. The system provides a digital certificate in all cases, an accessible verification platform to registered organizations, and has a central management system (dashboard) that depicts and analyses collated civil registrations into vital statistics for proper decision-making.

“This process marks a complete departure from traditional paper-based recording of vital events to a state-of-the-art digital solution that conforms to international best practices. This electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System promise to revolutionize how vital events are recorded, tracked, and analysed in the country”.

Continuing, the NPC Chairman stated: “It should also be noted that NPC, in the course of preparation for the first digital Census in Nigeria, the Census mapping using a ‘cutting edge’ technological methodology, ie Geographic Information System (GIS) captured geospatial data covering a multidimensional theme with total coverage of the Country.

“Inaccessible and conflict-infested areas were captured using a scientific data derivable methodology. The deliverable is a sustainable, useable and accessible Geospatial frame for successive Censuses, Georenferenced Vital Statistics, multidimensional and interactive spatial data useful for other MDAs and Research for National development.

“This Repository database will also be launched by Mr. President for the use of the public and private sector in Nigeria.

“As part of the event, the CRVS National coordination Committee will also be inaugurated by Mr. President. This is to establish a high-level coordination mechanism involving all relevant stakeholders for efficient functioning of the digital CRVS system and to support appropriate institutional and human infrastructure and operational procedures to capture vital statistics diverse events in Nigeria. It is to ensure commitments and a sustained national, international, financial and political investment for birth registration within the CRVS system in Nigeria.

“The launch of the e-CRVS by His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR marks the commitment of the current government and leadership to strengthen civil registration data capturing, collation, processing, dissemination and timely access to statistics on vital events in the country. It aims to accelerate the improved civil registration and vital statistics systems in Nigeria over a period of ten years, from 2023 to 2030 in a bid to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG):16.9.2 – legal identity for all, including birth registration.

“In conclusion, the launch of the Digital Civil Registration and Vital Registration System is set to overhaul the process of registration of births and deaths and launch Nigeria towards the attainment of the SDG Goal 16.9.2 – legal identity for all, including birth registration and laying a solid foundation for an efficient Civil registration and Vital Statistic system.

“Our confidence is reinforced in the fact that, over the years, the Commission has invested considerable time and resources planning for an improved digitization process in Census mapping, capturing vital statics data to give the nation a truly electronic Civil Registration & Vital Statistics data for socio-economic planning and providing the Nation with a near real time georeferenced Census data update.

“May I, therefore, appeal to every stakeholder and particularly our friends in the media who are gathered here today, to join hands with the National Population Commission in realizing the dream of providing the needed Vital Registration data that will facilitate and place our country on the pedestal of sustainable development”.