The Nigeria Population Commission (NPC) said it has captured and registered 1,109,515 births in the last 11 months across Kano State’s 44 Local Government Areas.
The Birth Registration Head of Department (HOD) in the Commission, Halima Inuwa, made this known during an interview with LEADERSHIP DAILY, noting that 1,035,022 births were captured digitally while 74, 493 were captured manually from January to November 2023.
She explained that the Commission is fully ready to embark on a digital registration exercise in 2024, as it has trained volunteers and supervisors who are already on the field with the support of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
According to her, digital registration in the state is currently being carried out in phases.
She said, “For the digital exercise, We started with Phase One consisting of 10 LGAs, Phase 2 consisting of 12 LGAs and currently we are in Phase 3 and 4 and some 10 and 12 LGAs, making up the 44 LGAs.
“Digital registration is easier, everything is being captured through a mobile device to the server. The most challenging task with this is network because sometimes we take the information offline, then upload it when there is a network”.
She lamented that inadequate working materials, sensitization and publicity, lack of cooperation from respondents, lack of network coverage and inadequate registration centres, especially outside Kano municipal are some of the challenges they face while carrying out the registration exercise in the state.
“Outside Kano municipal, we have between two and four registration centres in some LGAs but in the metropolitan city, we have 16 centres and some 17. The problem is outside the city.
“But we have plans of increasing more centres in 2024. We have VCM officers (volunteer staff) who go from house to house to capture those who were not captured in the hospital. Some registration birth centres are located in the LGAs Secretariat and some visit PHCs, especially on days of immunisation”, she added.
While urging parents not to neglect the importance of registering their child, especially at an early age, she further pointed out that once a child is up to 18 years old, he has to go to the headquarters for attestation and it won’t be done free of charge at that period.
The HOD also noted that just as birth registration is very important, death registration of our love ones is equally important as it helps to determine if there is an outbreak of diseases in a community or settlement as a result of the cause of death filled on the form which will be a pointer in case of where dead record is high in an area.
