Over the years, birth registrations in Nigeria have been paper-based, with the attendant consequences of low and inefficient documentation of births, but the National Population Commission (NPC) is set to digitalise the process.
In November, President Bola Tinubu launched the electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System (e-CRVS), a digital platform for the documentation of birth and stillbirth, birth attestation, adoption, marriage notification, divorce notification, migration, and death.
The e-CRVS platform is being managed by the National Population Commission, Nigeria’s statutory body vested with the responsibility of documenting births, deaths, and marriages, among others.
Nasir Kwarra, who heads NPC, said the e-CRVS is Nigeria’s fulfilment of its obligations to scaling up the automation of citizens’ identity database, which forms part of the resolutions of the African Ministers Conference held in 2022.
The cardinal aim of the African Conference of Ministers is “to provide strategic and policy guidance on pathways towards holistic, innovative and integrated digital identity management systems” to close the identity gap on the continent.
How e-CRVS works
Mr Kwarra explained that the eCRVS provides electronic certificates for different forms of registration, including births and deaths.
The platform equally gives access to corporate organisations for verification of data as it has a “central management system (dashboard) that depicts and analyses collated civil registrations into vital statistics for proper decision-making.”
Mr Kwarra noted that the process heralds a departure from traditional paper-based recording of vital events to a state-of-the-art digital solution that conforms to international best practices.
He pledged that the eCRVS system would revolutionise how crucial events like births, marriages and deaths are documented, tracked, and analysed in Nigeria.
NIMC gives impetus to electronic documentation
To give effect to the eCRVS, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has compelled Nigerians desirous of modifying their date of birth on the National Identification Number (NIN) database to tender an electronic civil registration and vital statistics system (e-CRVS) certificate from the National Population Commission.
The NIMC is a statutory Nigerian agency with the mandate to collect and keep biometric data of citizens and residents of Nigeria and issue the national identity number to Nigerians.
The NIN remains Nigeria’s foundational identity which operational identities are built on.
In a bid to operationalise the e-CRVS, the National Identity Management Commission on 24 December, issued fresh guidelines for the modification of date of birth.
Among other things, the guidelines demand that Nigerians seeking to modify their dates of birth to first obtain an e-CRVS from the National Population Commission and present the same to the National Identity Management Commission, where the change would be effected.
Many Nigerians are having a difficult time either applying for or renewing their passports at the Nigeria Immigration Service because of discrepancies in their biodata at the NIMC.
Before the new guidelines, an affidavit and the payment of N15,000 were required for the modification of personal information on the NIN system.
The CEO of the National Identity Management Commission, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, added that the guidelines only allow applicants to modify their date of birth once in a lifetime, and only at NIMC enrolment centres.
Registration and modification of the NIN have been steeped in allegations of extortions by officials of the identity agency from desperate Nigerians.
But Ms Coker-Odusote vowed to stamp out every form of malpractice from the commission, urging Nigerians not to give bribes for either NIN enrolment or modification.
Recently, the agency announced clearing over 2.5 million backlogs of identity information modification. Ms Coker-Odusote was commended for transformative policies owing to NIMC’s operational challenges in the past that stalled the issuance of NIN to Nigerians.
As of August 2023, the NIMC said it had issued the National Identification Number (NIN) to 102.39 million Nigerians.
Ms Abisoye Coker-Odusote reiterated the importance of the National Identification Number (NIN) as the only acceptable legal form of identity.
