The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has put the total annual births in Nigeria at seven million children.
This came to the fore at the maiden commemoration of the Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Day held in Abuja.
The total annual birth in Nigeria is equal to the total population of Rwanda, which indicates that the number of children born in Nigeria in a single year could make up a country.
Speaking at the event, the UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Mohammed Fall, said the country has to improve civil registration and vital statistics such as births and deaths to adequately address the nation’s population challenges.
Fall said 10.5 million Nigerian children are out of school and 70 per cent of all married Nigerian women were married before the age of 15.
The Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Eze Duruiheoma, said Nigeria will fully transit from manual registration of births and deaths to digital registration across the commission’s 3,600 registration centres in the country.
