Nigeria’s digital birth registration faces 60% coverage gap – Technology Times

The National Population Commission (NPC) has warned that Nigeria’s civil registration gap could widen further without faster adoption of digital registration services, as more than five million children are born in the country annually.

The Commission says only about 40% of births are currently registered, leaving a significant proportion of children outside the country’s formal civil registration system despite the nationwide transition to digital registration.

Dr Aminu Yusuf, Chairman of the NPC, raised the concern on Monday in Abuja at a media briefing to commemorate the 2026 Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Day.

Yusuf says the scale of annual births makes it urgent for Nigeria to accelerate registration coverage, strengthen public awareness and expand access to digital registration services, particularly in underserved communities.

“More than five million children are born in Nigeria every year. According to the most recent Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), only about 40 % of births are registered, while death registration coverage remains unacceptably low,” he says.

The NPC chairman says every birth, death and other vital event must be captured electronically if Nigeria is to build a complete and reliable national database capable of supporting effective governance and planning.

The warning comes barely six weeks after the Commission launched the nationwide fully digital Civil Registration and Vital Statistics system on the VitalReg platform on July 1, marking the end of manual registration.

The transition is part of Nigeria’s response to the new African CRVS decade, covering 2026 to 2036, which focuses on integrating, decentralising and digitalising civil registration systems…