Michael AndeyinNigerians seeking to obtain birth certificates on their country’s self-service portal deal with mounting frustration due to the website’s persistent failures. Many applicants report being unable to access the site for essential services such as registration, retrieval and validation of their birth records. Others experience failed payment transactions, unresponsive customer support and difficulties in correcting errors. As a result, they are left with no choice but to either be stranded or engage corrupt National Population Commission (NPC) officials who demand bribes to expedite the process.
One such Nigerian is Seun Olota, a Lagos-based full-stack web developer, who had to bribe NPC officials after his payment for service on the NPC portal did not yield its corresponding value.
Olota told FIJ he paid N3,036 in January 2024 for a birth attestation through Remita, but he could not complete the payment because the NPC website deemed it invalid. His next step was to visit a physical NPC office to explain his situation, but, he said, no NPC official listened to him.
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“When I got tired of the situation, I went to an NPC office at Ajose in the Eti-Osa Local Government Area where Oluwabunmi Badmus, an NPC staff, asked me to pay N18,000 for the attestation. Despite my explanation, Badmus informed me that my online payment did not matter,” Olota told FIJ.
Although Badmus’ statement hinted at extortion, the matter was not straightforward because the NPC, in response to an investigative report in January, asked Nigerians to make payments via Remita. However, many who paid this way could not use it and were forced to visit physical centres where they were extorted.
Two weeks after Olota paid for attestation, he discovered that the NPC had implemented his advice to vary their payment options by adopting Internet Banking and bank transfers.
“These options were added to the only card option available around January and early February 2024. Even the card payment option was not working at that time. That prompted me to make the payment on the NPC’s website because I needed the birth attestation document then,” he said.
“I paid, filled out my form, took a photo of myself with my phone, submitted the form and downloaded my copy that same day. It was simple. I was never going to pay N18,000 as an educated person. But my initial N3,036 is still hanging with the NPC to this day.”
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It is not uncommon for Nigerians to complain about the failings of the NPC website almost daily because of the type of problems it gives them. Launched in November 2023 by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System (e-CRVS) was created to improve birth registration rates and create a digital identity framework for all Nigerians.
More than a year since the federal government created the website, the NPC has yet to tackle the many problems plaguing it.
Typically, under the NPC’s posts on microblogging platform X, many Nigerians express their frustrations and describe the difficulties they encounter after attempting to use the NPC’s website. One Falode Rotimi, an X user, said he had applied to change his date of birth through NPC’s self-service website but had no success.
Hello, I applied to change my date of birth through NPC website (certificate of birth,attestation, self-service ). Over two weeks, I have tried to check the status of my application on the website without success . Please advise what I should do— Falode Rotimi (@igbegaoluwa) December 18, 2024
“I have tried to check the status of my application on the website without success,” Rotimi posted in December.
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Another user asked in December if anybody knew an alternative way to get a digital attestation or an alternative website as the NPC attestation website was not working. As FIJ has found, issues like this make people resort to other substandard websites set up to steal Nigerians’ data. In fact, the NPC distanced itself from one such website in January.
While one may conclude that these problems are not recent, comments made in 2025 under the NPC’s X page show that the website’s frequent dysfunction is a recurring problem many Nigerians encounter before they get what they want.
In the comments section on a February 5 post by the NPC on X, some Nigerians explained how the non-functional website posed a challenge for them. One of the commenters, Aniekon Okon, pointed out that a lot of the features of the NPC website were not functional.
Why is it that simple things in Nigeria can’t be kept simple, always fill with incompetent people and when their incompetency is being pointed out they still ignore this. Fix your website please a lot of features there are not functional— Aniekan Okon (@OkonAniekan) February 6, 2025
“Why is it that simple things in Nigeria can’t be kept simple, always filled with incompetent people, and when their incompetency is being pointed out they still ignore this? Fix your website, please; a lot of features there are not functional,” Okon said.
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On January 29, another commenter on an NPC X post said the attestation download was a scam. He accused the NPC of taking N3,000 from Nigerians. This commenter stated that the portal claimed he had downloaded the attestation, yet he found no image, file or document.
Ur attestation download is a scam, tellin me I already downloaded and I cnt do it again but image is nowhere to be found. Keep takin pples 3k. Wastemen— KaizahSozay (@KaizahSozay1) January 29, 2025
A search by FIJ on November 1 showed that many Nigerians who had embraced the birth certificate portal experienced difficulties using it. For example, Okodaso Peter, an X user, said in a November 1 response to the official NPC X handle that the attestation portal was inactive.
“Good morning, NPC. Your attestation portal is not working. It is affecting our ability to process NIMC modification of date of birth. What could be the problem?” Peter asked but never received a response.
FIJ emailed the NPC at info@nationalpopulation.gov.ng for comments on January 31. The NPC had not responded at press time.
This report was produced under the DPI Africa Journalism Fellowship Programme of the Media Foundation for West Africa and Co-Develop.
The post SPECIAL REPORT: How NPC’s Failing Portal Traps Nigerians in a Cycle of Errors, Extortion, Unresolved Payments appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.
