Why I don’t know my date of birth — Senator

Bukar Ibrahim, a Nigerian senator from Yobe State, has said he cannot give a specific day or month of his birth.

The senator, a member of the All Progressives Congress, however told our Correspondent on Monday he was sure he would clock 70 ‘early next year’.

“I was born in early 1949. It is an estimate. There was no recorded date of birth in the village then,” Mr Ibrahim told PREMIUM TIMES. “Early next year, I will be 70 years old.”

Our correspondent asked Mr Ibrahim, a three-time former governor of Yobe State, about his age on Monday morning after reports emerged that he launched a book to celebrate his 70th birthday over the weekend in Abuja. But the senator’s Wikipedia profile and some previous mention in the media put his age at 68, having been reportedly born in 1950.

It was at the event that Mr Ibrahim railed against President Muhammadu Buhari, accusing him of having failed to govern Nigeria well and predicting that Nigerians could deny him a second term in 2019, even if the president embarked on massive rigging to perpetuate himself in office.

Mr Ibrahim’s wife, Khadija, is serving in Mr Buhari’s cabinet as the minister of state for foreign affairs. She did not return PREMIUM TIMES’ requests seeking to know whether or not she agreed with her husband’s harsh criticism of the president.

Mr Ibrahim said he was born in Goniri, Gubja Local Government Area, Yobe State, where formal birth records were largely unenforced until decades after 1949.

His admission comes months after Mr Buhari admitted that he did not know his age. The president said he was told in December 2017 that he was 75, even though he thought he was 74. Mr Buhari celebrates his birthday officially on December 17, but it was unclear whether he had a birth certificate. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has also said he was unsure of his age.

Although the former president also has an official date of birth of May 5, 1937, he has repeatedly admitted that that was an estimate.

Mr Obasanjo said he was only told by his late mother that he was born on a major market day in the present-day Ogun State, but there was no specific day or month. The quest to know his exact age had also prompted the former president to travel to India, a journey he said was futile.

While birth and death records have been kept across Nigeria since what is now the National Population Commission was first established in 1973, children born in some states still do not have access to birth registration, especially those born in rural communities.

Nigeria’s population is estimated at 180 million, but lack of adequate record-keeping has made it difficult to ascertain how many actually have birth certificates, as well as sundry other critical details needed to identify an individual.

Also, there have been claims that hospital and population officials levy questionable charges on parents, which often discourage some from registering their newborns.