35m Nigerian Children Not Recognised By Federal Government- UNICEF

The United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) has revealed that about 35,031,047 under five years old Nigerian children are faceless and non-existent.

This they say is because this number of children do not have their births registered and thereby not recognized by the Federal Government.

According to them, the information is gathered from the RapidSMS 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 LGA’s across the country/nationwide.


Speaking at a two day media campaign for birth registration in Lagos, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, Sharon Oladiji stated that RapidSMS allows data to be collected in real time to enable LGA, State, Federal and partners to collect, analyze, and react to data more quickly.

According to RapidSMS dashboard only 8% of under 5 children are currently registered in Nigeria, presently on the RapidSMS dashboard, 3,046,178 under 5 children have been registered leaving out about 92% of unregistered births which when calculated sums to 35,031,047.

Statistics shows that the number of children under 5 in Nigeria is projected to increase from 32 million in 2015 to 58 million by 2050.

It states that Only 44 per cent of Africa’s births are registered, leaving an estimated 85 million children under 5 unregistered, 70% of children in Nigeria still do not have their births registered.