The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has called on the Federal Government to decentralise birth registration to the local council level to improve access and ensure that more Nigerian children acquire legal identity.

UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, Denis Onoise, made the call yesterday during a birth registration media dialogue themed “Giving Every Child a Legal Identity by Driving Birth Registration in Nigeria,” organised for journalists in Lagos.

Onoise, who lamented that an estimated 24.8 million children under the age of five lacked legal identity as a result of low and inadequate birth registration coverage in the country, stressed that state and local council services must be decentralised to ensure that children, particularly those in underserved communities, could easily obtain birth certificates.

He noted that legal identity was essential for generating official records, establishing a child’s right to recognition before the law and providing continuous data for planning, monitoring and evaluating government programmes.

Onoise added that reliable birth registration data is also critical to the implementation of social protection, healthcare, education and housing programmes.

He, however, identified limited access to civil registration, inadequate registration centres, inefficient registration processes and insufficient financial, human and material resources as some of the challenges hampering birth registration in Nigeria.

He also cited the direct and indirect costs associated with registration and obtaining birth certificates as barriers preventing some families from registering their children.

The UNICEF specialist said that the absence of birth registration could expose children to exclusion from education, healthcare and other essential services, as well as increase their vulnerability to child labour, trafficking, abuse and exploitation.

Earlier,UNICEF Communication Officer, Blessing Ejiofor, said the media dialogue was designed to equip journalists with accurate data and practical knowledge on birth registration while connecting them with key stakeholders, including health workers, community registrars and parents.

She urged participants to leave the workshop with “a clear, data-backed understanding of why millions of children in South-West Nigeria and Edo remain unregistered and what that is costing them.”

Onoise, however, stressed the need for the Federal Government to reform existing laws and regulatory frameworks, decentralise birth registration to the council level and digitise the registration process.

He also called for interoperability and sharing of data among government agencies, integration of birth registration with primary healthcare services and increased social mobilisation to raise awareness about its benefits.

UNICEF Chief of Lagos Field Office, Celine Lafoucriere, said that about 3.5 million children across Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti and Edo states lacked birth certificates and legal identity.

The UNICEF boss said that Lagos State, in collaboration with the National Population Commission (NPC), was among the states that had launched birth registration for children under one, adding that the birth certificate issued under the initiative now comes with a National Identification Number.

She, however, said that the registration gap remained wide across the region, noting that many parents were unaware that birth registration was free and could be done at health facilities and through digital platforms.

The UNICEF boss, therefore, called for greater media support to increase public awareness and encourage parents to register their children, urging journalists to use their platforms to promote birth registration.

Earlier, the National Population Commission Director, Lagos State, Kekere Ekun Sherifdeen, said the Commission had commenced full digitisation of birth registration in the country.

Abiola Kekere-Ekun urged journalists to go beyond reporting government activities by taking the birth registration campaign directly to communities.