The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has revealed about 35,031,047 under five- year- old children are faceless and non-existent in the country.
The Fund attributed the development to the fact that their births were not registered by the Federal Government.
UNICEF said it gathered the figure from the Rapid SMS information tracking tool, a data collection website that collects information of birth registration through SMS or Text Messages, from mobile users.
This tracking tool allows real time tracking of local and regional birth registration activities in 774 Local Government Areas of the nation.
Speaking at a two- day media campaign for birth registration in Lagos, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist Sharon Oladiji stated RapidSMS allows data to be collected in real time to enable LGA, State, Federal and partners to collect, analyse and react to data more quickly.
According to RapidSMS dashboard, only 8 percent of under five-year-old children are registered in Nigeria.
It showed just 3,046,178 under 5 children have been registered, leaving out about 92 percent of unregistered births amounting to over 35,031,047.
Oladiji stated: “For a child without birth certificate, the record is not with the National Population Commission register and it will be difficult to plan for such.
“So when we depend on age affidavit, when there is a commission set up by the constitution to register children, we are doing a lot of disservice to that generation of children.”
UNICEF Communication specialist Geoffrey Njoku said since data shows Nigeria births seven million children every year, the country must ensure it registers seven million children and not less.
He said: “It is a right, according to the convention and rights of a child, a child must have a legal identity that makes him or her a Nigerian.
“You have to have an identity so that in the system you will not be an unknown quantity, a faceless human being?
“That is why we work on the rights of a child and the right to an identity is one of the rights.” - The Nation
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