As Southwest states and Edo State grapple with an estimated 3.5 million children without birth certificates, the National Population Commission (NPC) has identified poor network connectivity as one of the major challenges hindering the smooth and timely implementation of electronic birth (e-birth) registration.
BusinessDay recalls that Celine Lafoucriere, Chief of the UNICEF Lagos Field Office, on Tuesday, August 11, 2026, raised concerns that children who are not registered at birth could, in the future, face difficulties accessing government social protection programmes and essential services, as well as claiming inheritance from their parents.
Lafoucriere spoke at a two-day birth registration media dialogue organised by the NPC in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for media practitioners from Lagos, Ondo, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti and Edo states.
The dialogue was themed, ‘Giving Every Child a Legal Identity by Driving Birth Registration in Nigeria.’
She highlighted several rights and opportunities that unregistered children could struggle to access, including obtaining passports, voting when they reach adulthood, inheriting their parents’ property and establishing their legal identity.
Speaking to journalists at Majeck Health Centre, Sangotedo, during a field visit organised as part of the dialogue, Phillip Agbatun, NPC Registrar in charge of the health centre, said poor network connectivity was slowing down the electronic birth registration process.
Agbatun explained that network disruptions reduced the number of children that could be registered each day, creating delays for parents and health workers.
He recalled that two weeks earlier, 76 people had visited the health centre for birth registration, but only 46 could be successfully registered because of network-related challenges.
‘Sometimes, when you get to the point of submitting the registration, you experience delays because of poor network connectivity. It takes time before we submit this thing, and because we don’t want to waste our mothers’ time, we have a form that we print. We collect their details so that we won’t keep them here unnecessarily,’ he said.
According to him, network disruptions could increase the time required to register a single child significantly.
‘Whenever there are network challenges, sometimes it takes as long as 10 to 15 minutes to attend to a single person,’ he said, adding that the process takes about five minutes when the network is stable.
Agbatun also stressed that birth registration could not be conducted by proxy, urging mothers to provide their husbands’ National Identification Numbers (NIN) to ensure that the correct names and other details were captured during registration.
He stated that birth registration is free for children aged zero to five years, while children above the age of five who have not been registered would be required to pay N5,000.
Meanwhile, Duke Juliet, a nursing mother who spoke during the field visit, said she registered her daughter when the child was six weeks old. The child is now 10 weeks old.
Juliet said she completed the registration during an immunisation exercise, and encouraged other parents, particularly mothers, to take advantage of opportunities provided at health facilities to register their children.
She urged parents to present their children for e-birth registration early, stressing the importance of obtaining a legal identity for every child.
The NPC and UNICEF have continued to promote birth registration as a critical component of Nigeria’s identity-management system, particularly as millions of children remain without official proof of birth.