NPC Launches Self-Service Birth Registration Portal
Millions of Nigerians who have spent years chasing paper trails for a document as basic as a birth certificate now have a digital route, following the full rollout of the National Population Commission’s electronic civil registration platform.
The commission’s chairman, Dr Aminu Yusuf, announced at a press briefing in Abuja that the VitalReg platform, operating under the Electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (E-CRVS) system, became operational nationwide on July 1, 2026, covering the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Yusuf described the initiative as one of the most significant reforms in the history of civil registration in Nigeria and a major step towards resolving the country’s persistent legal identity and demographic data gaps.
Through the portal, Nigerians can register births and deaths, apply for birth attestation, correct registration records, verify certificates and access other civil registration services without first queuing at a registration centre. The system also covers stillbirth registration, diaspora birth and death notification, marriage and divorce notification, migration registration and hospital onboarding, and it issues a digital certificate in all cases alongside a verification platform for registered organisations and a central dashboard that analyses collated registrations into vital statistics.
The scale of the gap the platform is meant to close is documented in the commission’s own figures. According to Yusuf, Nigeria records an estimated five million births annually, but millions of births and deaths are not officially documented. He disclosed that birth registration coverage stands at about 57 per cent nationwide, while death registration remains below 20 per cent. “These gaps deprive many Nigerians of legal identity and limit the availability of reliable data needed for effective national planning,” he said.
Independent survey data tells a similar story. The Nigeria Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey of 2021 found that 50.3 per cent of children under one year had their births registered, 57.3 per cent of children under five were registered, but only 36.0 per cent of children under five actually possessed a birth certificate. On death registration, World Health Organisation data showed that only about 10 per cent of deaths in Nigeria are registered, with insufficient capacity to produce statistics on causes of death.
The national averages also mask sharp regional imbalances. MICS 2021 recorded the highest levels of birth registration in Lagos at 94 per cent and the FCT at 87 per cent, with the lowest in Jigawa at 23.6 per cent and Sokoto at 22.5 per cent.
Civil registration in Nigeria has moved slowly for decades. The National Population Commission began formal operations in 1988, but compulsory nationwide registration only commenced with the Births, Deaths, etc. (Compulsory Registration) Act No. 69 of 1992. Before then, birth certificates were issued in only four states, Anambra, Oyo, Plateau and Kaduna, under a pilot programme. The 1992 Act requires that births be registered within 60 days of occurrence, while providing for late registration through age declaration affidavits and attestation.
Progress since has been incremental. UNICEF recorded a rise in registration from 30 per cent in 2013 to 43 per cent in 2018, largely by integrating birth registration into health services, yet about 17 million children under five, or one in five, remained unregistered. The agency identified the operation of two parallel and competing registration systems at federal and state levels, insufficient birth registrars and low public awareness as barriers to higher coverage.
The current reform has a clear policy lineage. Yusuf said it builds on the launch of the E-CRVS system and the inauguration of the National Coordination Committee on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics by President Bola Tinubu in November 2023. The platform itself is not entirely new: the commission, working with Barnksforte Technologies Limited and UNICEF, held a three day retreat in Abuja in February 2024 to refine the VitalReg self service application, delivered through a public private partnership arrangement.
To widen coverage, the commission says it has established 4,011 functional registration centres across the 774 local government areas and plans to expand the network to about 8,000 centres. It has also partnered with the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria, the National Identity Management Commission, UNICEF and Barnksforte Technologies Limited to decentralise birth registration and legal identity services at community level.
On cost, the commission stated that birth registration for children from birth to five years and death registration would remain free government services, while charges were reviewed for specialised administrative services including record modification, certificate reissuance, birth attestation and verification requests. “Let me assure Nigerians that this review is not intended to create barriers to access. Birth registration and birth notification services remain highly subsidised, in line with the Commission’s commitment to achieving universal registration,” Yusuf said. A full published schedule of the revised charges was not part of the announcement, leaving the precise cost implications for applicants unclear at this stage.
One operational detail carries weight for households. At a demonstration of the platform in Lokoja led by the commission’s ICT personnel, the process captured the biodata of both parents and showed that at least one parent must hold a valid National Identification Number before the registration of a newborn can be completed. Applicants without a NIN receive only a notification of birth and a temporary birth certificate number, while attestation is restricted to persons aged 18 and above.
That requirement ties civil registration directly to the pace of national identity enrolment. NIMC Director General, Abisoye Coker Odusote, said 137,371,080 Nigerians had been enrolled in the NIN database, The commission has begun a ward by ward enrolment campaign across the country’s 8,809 political wards, with World Bank backing under an expanded digital identity target of 180 million people, though Coker Odusote acknowledged that “we still have a shortage because Nigeria’s population is estimated at about 200 million, while some estimates put it at 230 million or even 250 million.”
*State level rollouts are already under way. The Federal Commissioner representing Jigawa State, Suleiman Umar, confirmed that VitalReg became operational across the state’s 27 local government areas on July 1, 2026, while in Kogi, Federal Commissioner Yori Afolabi called on state and local governments, healthcare institutions, traditional and religious leaders and civil society organisations to support the drive for timely registration of all births and deaths nationwide. The Federal Commissioner representing Oyo State, Dr Eyitayo Oyetunji, described the transition as the commission’s most significant milestone since it commenced civil registration in 1988, noting that registration had been conducted manually for nearly four decades, and said the system would allow Nigerians in the diaspora to register vital events through a self service process from anywhere in the world. [National Population Commission]
The wider stake is a target Nigeria signed up to internationally. Sustainable Development Goal target 16.9 requires governments to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration, by 2030, measured by the proportion of children under five whose births have been registered. With coverage at about 57 per cent and death registration still in single or low double digits by most measures, the distance between the portal’s launch and universal registration remains considerable. Nigerians unable to complete the process online are still directed to visit an NPC registration centre for assistance.