By Hadiza Musa Yusuf
The National Population Commission (NPC) says it has recorded over 36,000 digital birth registrations in Kano State within the last nine months, as part of efforts to strengthen the civil registration system.
The State Director of NPC, Balarebe Kabir, disclosed this during a two-day refresher training for trainers held in Kano on Tuesday.
According to him, the registrations were captured through the electronic birth registration system introduced by the Commission.
“In the last nine months in Kano State, we have registered over 36,000 babies under one year,” he said.
He added that the Commission also registered about 27,000 children under the age of five, as well as over 40,000 children above five years, based on data available on its dashboard.
Kabir noted that the Commission is gradually moving from manual to digital birth registration but is currently running both systems simultaneously.
“Very soon, the National Population Commission will stop all manual registration and continue with the digital. For now, we are doing both concurrently,” he said.
Kabir explained that the training was organised to review activities carried out over the past months and to address challenges encountered during implementation.
“The training, supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) with funding from the Netherlands government, is being carried out in collaboration with the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to enhance the capacity of our staff and supporting personnel.
He revealed that after the training, participants would carry out step-down training across all local government areas to train ward-level registrars.
According to him, about 484 ward focal persons are involved in the exercise across Kano State.
The NPC director, however, highlighted several challenges faced during the implementation, including technical issues with the application.
“Sometimes the application goes down for two or three days, even up to seven days. We also experience login issues and challenges during validation of names,” he said.
He added that lack of data support and allowances for ad hoc registrars has also affected outreach to remote and hard-to-reach communities.
Kabir said the Commission has engaged the state government for support to improve the process and expand coverage.
He called on residents, traditional institutions and organisations to support the initiative.
He stressed the importance of birth registration, describing it as a fundamental right of every child.
“The first right of any child is to be identified and have an identity. Your children need to have particulars just like any other document,” he added.
UNICEF further added that the training objective is designed to strengthen the capacity of participants to effectively use the Vital Registration application for digital birth registration which aims to improve their technical skills, ensure accurate and high-quality data entry, and equip them with the knowledge to train other registrars at the ward level.
The programme also seeks to clarify user roles and working procedures to ensure a more efficient and reliable system that supports every child’s right to a legal identity.