Nasir Kwarra, the National Population Commission chair, says the federal government has developed an electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System (eCRVS) and a Geospatial Data Repository to boost birth, death and other registrations.

Mr Kwarra announced this at a news conference in Abuja, adding that the effort was to scale up the automated registration process

in the country.

He explained that during the Sixth Session of the Conference of African Ministers responsible for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CVRS) held in 2022, African ministers made several resolutions and encouraged all countries in the continent to automate the CRVS process and ensure the implementation of the UN Legal Identity Agenda.

He said, “Member states were further encouraged to develop an electronic technology-driven system to boost data generation

and civil statistics. As part of Nigeria’s way of complying with the resolutions of the African ministers and scaling up the automated process in Nigeria.”

Mr Kwarra added, “NPC, in collaboration with UNICEF, developed the eCRVS Operational Readiness Assessment Report. This shows the potential of digital technology in providing transformative outcomes in CRVS and integrating data from multiple systems to securely store data at scale in a cost-effective way in Nigeria.”

Mr Kwarra added that the report provided a holistic approach to the future state vision for digitised CRVS, the rollout of decentralised

digital birth registration system as part of CRVS, and identified areas to strengthen the automation of the system.

The NPC chief also mentioned that recommendations that would significantly increase the likelihood of reaching a universal digitalised birth registration system in Nigeria had been made.

“The report ushered in the bold step taken by the commission for a transformative innovation of the CRVS system by developing a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement between the commission and Barnksforte Technologies Limited, an innovative indigenous ICT solution provider,” said Mr Kwarra. 

The NPC boss explained that the PPP arrangement “is to promote the system as a complete electronic system that digitalises all civil registrations such as birth registration, stillbirth registration, birth attestation, adoption, marriage notification, divorce notification,

migration and death.”

(NAN)