The National Population Commission (NPC) has said it registered over 36,000 births in Kano State in nine months of deploying its electronic birth registration system.
The Kano State director of NPC, Balarabe Kabir, made this known during a two-day State Refresher Training of Trainers held in Kano.
Kabir said the training was organised by the NPC in collaboration with the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), with support from the Government of the Netherlands through the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The director said the figure reflects only part of the total number of children captured so far.
He said about 27,000 children under five years and over 40,000 above five years, who were previously unregistered, had also been documented.
He explained that the training brought together ALGON focal persons and District Civil Registrars from the 44 local government areas of the state to strengthen their capacity on the use of the Vital Registration application for electronic civil registration.
Kabir added that the commission would conduct step-down training across the 44 Local Government Areas to reach ward registrars in the 484 wards of the state.
He, however, identified challenges affecting implementation to include system downtime, login issues, delays in National Identification Number (NIN) validation and inadequate support for field registrars, especially in hard-to-reach areas.
The director said the commission engaged the Kano State Government to address the challenges and to scale up the exercise.
Kabir stressed that birth registration remained a fundamental right of every child and was critical for planning, security and access to social services.
He called on stakeholders, including traditional institutions and corporate organisations, to support the commission’s efforts to ensure that every child is registered.
A participant, Aisha Umar, who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sidelines of the training, said the exercise had enhanced her knowledge and capacity to effectively carry out birth registration at the grassroots.
Another participant, Hadiza Sani, said that the knowledge gained would help address challenges associated with low birth registration in rural communities.
She lauded the organisers for the comprehensive nature of the sessions, adding that the step-down training would further strengthen awareness and compliance among residents.(NAN)
