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A unique opportunity to use football to improve birth registration awareness and completeness in Nigeria
  1. Olusesan Ayodeji Makinde1,2,3,
  2. Clifford Obby Odimegwu1,
  3. Funmilola M OlaOlorun4
  1. 1 Demography and Population Studies Program, Schools of Public Health and Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
  2. 2 MEASURE Evaluation/John Snow Inc., Abuja, Nigeria
  3. 3 Viable Knowledge Masters, Abuja, Nigeria
  4. 4 Department of Community Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
  1. Correspondence to Dr Olusesan Ayodeji Makinde, Viable Knowledge Masters, 22 Olusegun Obasanjo Street, Peace Court Estate, Lokogoma, Abuja, Nigeria; sesmak{at}gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2016-097404

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    Nigeria is a football-loving nation and has won silverware at international footballing events. By 2016, the country had won five of the under-17 world championships that had ever been held since the tournament’s inception in 1985 (16 tournaments). Brazil ranked next with number of three trophies. Nigeria also has the highest number of football players on the African continent, many of whom are youth.1 As at2006, there were over 6.5 million football players in the country, the eighth largest concentration of players in the world.1

    The biggest problem facing African football

    Age-related footballing events have been bedevilled by age fraud. Age fraud is a term for age fabrication or the use of false documentation to gain an advantage over opponents and has been described as the ‘biggest problem’ facing African football.2 Nigeria has been repeatedly accused of being involved in age fraud and several of its players have been disqualified from different events. The country was suspended by FIFA in 1989 and stripped of its hosting rights for the FIFA world youth championship in 1991 after three of the players who it presented in a previous contest had disparities in age …

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