By Ike Uchechukwu

The National Population Commission (NPC) and the Cross River State Ministry of Health in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), have organized a 2-day Stakeholders’ Engagement and Development of Micro-policy and Action Plans on Collaborative Birth Registration Service Delivery at Health facilities across all levels in local government areas in Cross River.

The dialogue which ultimately aims to evolve modalities that would increase birth registration of children under the age of five took place in Calabar between Monday 1st and Tuesday 2nd November, 2021.

Speaking at the event, Dr Ibrahim Conteh, Head of UNICEF Field Office Enugu, said that Cross River State was still behind in terms of birth registration, which according to him was quite worrisome.

His words : “At the moment the state is a little bit over 60 percent on children registered all over the state. This is very worrying because as you know when a child doesn’t have a birth certificate is as good as not existing at all because there’s no way he or she can be captured in the system.

“Going forward, there are so many importance in somebody’s life where you need a birth certificate. You need an identity to go to school and to access other basic services. If you don’t have that identity it can affect you in the future.

“We are insisting that the government steps up effort to ensure that every child is registered at birth. From all the discussion we had, I think NPoPC has a limited capacity to ensure that they push this.

“At the community level we have the traditional leaders who are supposed to help in that respect, but there are also limitations.

“So we called this meeting to bring in all the stakeholders together to discuss, think together, assess and evaluate the problems and also look at how we can all join hands to ensure that the figure for birth registration step up by making sure that every child who is being born is registered at birth and also have a birth certificate.”

Corroborating the UNICEF Head of Enugu Field Office, Mr Billy Bassey Eteng, the State Director of NPC, said the Commission which is constitutionally vested with the power to register birth, has limited capacity to carry out effective birth registration programme, which was why it is going into collaboration with UNICEF and other government agencies.

“As you know, birth registration is a holistic thing. It is not only a programme for the National Population Commission, although we are anchoring it. Birth registration has to do with data and statistics and it’s something that affects everybody.

“There’s no where in the world where this programme is manage solely by the agency that’s in-charge of it. It is usually a collaborative effort – government and donor agencies come together to fund it”, he said.

The State Director further explained that people who were born after 1992 are entitled to birth certificate, while those born before then are entitled to attestation of birth, which according to him, is internationally recognized and accepted than an affidavit of age declaration issue by courts and local government councils.

He also stressed that birth registration is free and that parents should always avail their newly born children the opportunity to have them registered and obtain birth certificates.