The National Population Commission has disclosed Nigeria registers only about 40% of births in the country warning that millions of children remain without official proof of legal identity.
NPC Chairman, Dr Aminu Yusuf, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja at a media briefing to commemorate the 2026 Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day stating more than five million children are born in Nigeria every year, making the low level of birth registration a major challenge for the country’s identity management, planning and social protection systems.
“According to the most recent Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, only about 40% of births are registered, while death registration coverage remains unacceptably low,” he said.
He called for stronger partnerships, sustained public awareness and greater community participation to close the registration gap, stressing that every birth, death and other vital event should be captured in Nigeria’s electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics system.
According to him, reliable civil registration is critical to providing government with accurate demographic information for national planning, resource allocation, infrastructure development and social protection.
Digital Birth Registration
Nigeria formally transitioned to a fully digital CRVS system on July 1, 2026, through the VitalReg platform, ending the previous manual registration process. Yusuf said the digital system had improved the security, efficiency, reliability and accessibility of civil registration while reducing duplication through automated verification and unique identifiers.
He, however, said technology alone would not solve the country’s registration deficit, noting that the NPC was decentralising registration services and working with partners to bring them closer to communities.
In January 2025, the Commission entered into a Partnership Compact Agreement with the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria, National Identity Management Commission, UNICEF and Bankforte Technologies Limited to decentralise civil registration, improve interoperability and expand access to digital registration.
Yusuf said about 4,000 of Nigeria’s 8,809 wards had so far been reached with digital civil registration services under the partnership, with efforts ongoing to extend coverage to all wards. The NPC currently has more than 4,000 functional registration centres across the 774 local government areas and is expanding the network to about 8,000 centres nationwide.
The Commission is also working with the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, state governments and health institutions to integrate birth registration into routine health services, allowing children to be registered closer to where they are born.
Deputy Director, Civil Registration at the NPC, Obodo Adaku, said the Commission was working with NPHCDA to incorporate birth registration into routine immunisation services at government health facilities. She said nurses at immunisation points were expected to check whether children had birth certificates and facilitate registration where necessary.
