FG Approves N5.3 Billion For Development of Electronic Platform For Birth And Death Registrations

The federal government of Nigeria has approved the sum of N5.3 billion for the development of an Electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System (eCRVS), that will store the records of birth and death registrations in the country.

The eCRVs will also provide attestation and verification of certificates to end users on the platform.

This was disclosed by the acting Head of Media and Publicity of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Mr. Ifeanyi Nwoko in Abuja.

He disclosed that the concessionaire for the project, Messrs Barnksforte Technologies, would fund the project while the National population commission would be the project grantor.

Prior to this, the ICRC disclosed that the registrations of births and deaths in Nigeria were done manually, noting that such a process was flawed by low coverage and inadequate data.

Investors King understands that the director of Information Technology at the National Population Commission (NPC), Dr. Bertram Chukwubuike, in 2020, had emphasized the importance of digital registration for births and deaths in the country, noting that it enhances accuracy and supports sustainable national development.

Several Stakeholders have also disclosed that vital registration in Nigeria, given the output from the National Population Commission, needs to be strengthened and coordinated at various tiers of government. They noted that the lack of efficient registration can negatively impact the ability to access basic services, like health or education, and the protection of individual rights. 

There is a high demand from these stakeholders for evidence‐based guidance on the value of digital tools to strengthen linkages between civil registration and health systems, as a mechanism to improve the timeliness and accuracy of birth and death statistics.

Notably, there is a surge in the use of digital devices across the world to record the birth and deaths of citizens in countries. In some settings, members of the public, healthcare workers, and others use mobile phones to recorf the birth or death of the health system or a central registration system.

The World Health Organization (WHO) disclosed that timely, accurate, and complete statistics on births and deaths, gained through the act of registration, are fundamental for tracking progress towards sustainable development goals and achievement of universal health coverage.

This means that statistics on births and deaths are used to generate population health indicators (e.g. fertility rate, birth rate, and life expectancy), data on mortality (e.g. maternal and infant mortality rates), and disease burden (e.g. using details of the cause of death.