43% of Nigerian children don’t ‘exist’ - NPC

By Unknown

Monday 27 October 2014

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The National Population Commission on Monday lamented that 43 per cent of Nigerian children, under the ages of five, legally do not exist.

The commission said apathy towards registration of deaths had compounded this to make statistics needed for national planning and development inadequate.



Delivering a keynote address at the Orientation Workshop on Birth Registration Messaging in Kaduna, a NPC programme sponsored by United Nations International Children Education Fund, the Chairman of the NPC, Mr. Eze Duruiheoma, said, “In Nigeria, according to the 2013 Demographic and Health Survey, birth registration of children under five years, is 57 per cent while the remaining 43 per cent remains unregistered, and in legal terms, do not exist,”

The NPC chairman, who was represented by the commission’s Director of Public Affairs, Mr. Simon Otene, explained that ignorance of mothers and care givers on the importance of registering the births of their new born and obtaining certificates as evidence were responsible for this scenario.

He said, “The problem is compounded by the fact that three in every five births (62 per cent of all births) occur at home and only 35 per cent of births in Nigeria is delivered in health facilities.

“The Demographic and Health Survey data indicated that women in urban areas are more than twice as likely to deliver in a health facility than their rural counterparts (60 per cent to 25 per cent)”

He said the South-East had the highest proportion of institutional deliveries of 74 per cent, followed by South-West with 70 per cent, while the North West has the lowest with eight per cent.

He added that women with higher levels of educational attainment were more likely to deliver in a health facility than women with lower or no education.

The NPC chairman noted that women with more than secondary school education had 90 per cent, nine times more likely than women with no education at 10 per cent likelihood of delivery at a health facility.

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