Borno State is leading other states of the federation in the number of birth registrations conducted nationwide in the last five years, with 83 percent under-one registration and 20 percent under-five registration, the National Population Commission, NPC, has said.
Emmanuel Mark, Head of Department, NPC’s Vital Registration Department, said this yesterday, in an interview. Birth registration is the continuous, permanent, compulsory and universal recording of the occurrence and characteristics of birth, which is free for children aged between 0 and 17 at any healthcare facility across the country.
Mark spoke on the sideline of a media dialogue on birth registration in Kano, convened by the United Nations Children Education Fund, UNICEF, in support of the Child Right Information Bureau, Federal Ministry Information, Culture and Tourism. According to Mark, “apart from UNICEF, there are other organisations like the UNHCR and non-governmental organisations, NGOs, that supported us in the birth registration processes.
“What we also did to earn the glory was to assign our registrars not to only register at designated centres, but also register in private hospitals and internally displaced persons, IDP, camps. So we have to take advantage of the IDP camps across the state and register the children.”
The National Demographic Health Survey revealed that Borno tops the birth registration rate with 172,878 boys and 190,438 girls, totaling 363,316 within the period. Kano came second on the chart with the registration of 172,925 boys and 166,023 girls, totaling 338,948.
Also, Lagos State registered 117,586 boys and 113,998 girls, totaling 231,584, while Oyo State registered 86,615 boys and 86,522 girls, which gave a total figure of 173,137 registration. The state with the lowest birth registration is Bayelsa: 7,567 boys and 7,309 girls registration with total figure of 14,876.
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/08/borno-leads-kano-lagos-others-in-birth-registration/