Developing a Vital Statistics Improvement Plan for Ekiti State

Vital statistics systems that accurately record births, deaths, marriages, and divorces are foundational to demographic planning, and developing an improvement plan for Ekiti State's civil registration and vital statistics system addresses persistent data quality deficits in South West Nigeria. This study developed a vital statistics improvement plan for Ekiti State, drawing on assessment of the state's civil registration infrastructure, completeness of vital events recording, and institutional coordination arrangements. A professional assessment and planning methodology was applied, incorporating structured interviews with 12 NPopC Ekiti State staff, 8 local government civil registration officers, 6 health facility records managers, and documentary review of Ekiti State CRVS annual reports. Assessment confirmed that birth registration completeness was 63.4 percent, death registration was 31.2 percent, and marriage registration was below 20 percent. Only 38.5 percent of health facilities transmitted death notifications to the civil registry within the required 30 days. LGA-level registrar capacity was severely limited, with most offices staffed below minimum standard. The improvement plan specifies five priority interventions: integrated civil registration and vital statistics digitisation, health facility death notification strengthening, LGA registrar capacity building, community awareness campaigns, and inter-agency coordination with NPopC and NHIS. Expert review by eight CRVS specialists confirmed the plan's technical adequacy. The study recommends the plan be adopted by Ekiti State Ministry of Economic Planning and adopted as the state's contribution to Nigeria's CRVS decade action plan.

Keywords: vital statistics, civil registration, Ekiti State, CRVS, demographic data