Leaving without documents is normal. People leave at night, or during a window that lasted four minutes, and a birth certificate is not what you are thinking about.
The consequence arrives about three weeks later, when everything you need to do turns out to require a document sitting in a drawer in a house you cannot go back to.
It is recoverable. It is slow rather than impossible, and doing it in the right order makes a substantial difference to how long it takes, because several of these unlock the others.
The order
Do not attempt everything at once. This sequence exists because each step makes the next one easier.
- National Identification Number. First, always. It is the foundation for almost everything else — banking, a passport, a SIM card, formal employment. If you know your NIN but have lost the slip, that is a much smaller problem than not knowing it.
- Bank Verification Number. You already have one if you have ever had an account. It does not need to be recreated, only retrieved, and there is a short USSD code for checking it — ask your bank for the current one. Your BVN is yours and follows you between banks.
- A bank account you control. With NIN and BVN, this becomes straightforward, and it is what everything financial depends on. How to open one safely covers the address problem.
- A SIM card in your own name, registered to your NIN. A number nobody else has ever had access to.
- The children’s birth certificates. Needed for school. Slow, so start it early even though it sits fourth.
- School records and results. Needed for enrolment and for work.
- Your own certificates. Educational and professional. Slowest of all, and they matter for employment rather than for survival, which is why they come last.
Passports, driving licences and voter’s cards sit outside this sequence. Do them when you need them rather than as a matter of course.
Birth certificates
Registration of births is handled by the National Population Commission, and their offices issue certificates and replacements. Where a birth was never registered, or was registered long ago in a place you cannot easily reach, an attestation of birth is the usual route and a court affidavit is sometimes required as part of it.
What helps enormously: the hospital where the birth happened, the date, and any card or record from the time. An immunisation card is frequently accepted as supporting evidence and people throw them away without realising.
Start with the children’s rather than your own. A school will insist on theirs; very few things will insist on yours.
School and examination records
Schools keep records and will usually confirm attendance and results for a former pupil, sometimes for a small fee. Go in person or send somebody, because letters go unanswered.
For examination results, the examination bodies have processes for confirming a result or issuing an attestation where a certificate is lost. You generally need your examination number and the year, so any old document showing them is worth hunting for.
If the school is somewhere you cannot safely go, ask us. Sending somebody to collect a record is a small thing we do fairly often.
The address problem
This is the part specific to your situation, and it is worth thinking about before you fill in the first form.
Every one of these processes asks for an address, and some of them post things. If you have moved to get away from him, you do not want your new address entering half a dozen systems, appearing on a card, or being mentioned by a relative who saw an envelope.
What works:
- Use a workplace address where you have one.
- Use a trusted person’s address, chosen for not being the obvious one.
- Use ours, where that is appropriate. We hold post for people.
- Collect in person rather than having anything delivered.
- Keep the same address across all of them, so that nothing has to be corrected later.
Do not use a relative’s address that he knows, however convenient, and do not use the old address on the basis that you will collect things from there.
Practical points that save weeks
- Go early in the day. Most of these offices are worse after mid-morning.
- Take more than you think you need. Every form of identification you have, photographs, and any old document with a number on it.
- Photograph everything before you hand it over, including forms you fill in.
- Write down who you spoke to and any reference number, every time.
- Ask what the next step is and when, and ask them to write it down.
- Expect to go twice. Almost everything takes two visits, and planning for that is less demoralising than discovering it.
- Do not pay anybody standing outside offering to speed it up.
What can be done without documents
Worth knowing, because people put off things they could actually do.
Emergency medical treatment does not require identification. A police complaint does not require identification. Talking to a lawyer does not. Getting a protection order does not depend on producing a marriage certificate, though evidence of the relationship helps.
Schools will often admit a child provisionally while paperwork is sorted out, particularly if somebody explains the circumstances, and that conversation is worth having rather than waiting until everything is in order.
Getting the originals back
Sometimes it is possible, and it should not be attempted casually.
Do not go back to the house alone to collect documents. Where property or documents need to be retrieved, the police will sometimes accompany a person for that purpose, and a lawyer can ask a court to order the release of documents as part of proceedings. Both are slower than going yourself and considerably safer.
If a relative can collect them safely without being questioned afterwards, that is often the simplest route. Ask yourself honestly whether they will be safe once he realises what happened.
What we do
Fees, transport and the going back and forth, which is the part that defeats most people. We also send somebody with you where an office is difficult, and we hold documents afterwards so that this does not have to happen twice.
Once you have replacements, keep copies somewhere else immediately. That is the whole lesson of this article and it takes twenty minutes.
Questions people ask
Which document should I replace first?
Your National Identification Number, because banking, a passport, a SIM card and formal employment all depend on it. Then your BVN, which only needs retrieving rather than recreating, then a bank account.
The children were never registered at birth. What now?
An attestation of birth through the National Population Commission is the usual route, sometimes with a court affidavit. The hospital name, the date and any immunisation card all help.
What address do I put on the forms?
Not your new one if you have moved to get away from him. Use a workplace, a trusted person who is not the obvious choice, or ours. Keep it the same across every application so nothing has to be corrected later.
Can I do anything at all without documents?
Yes. Emergency treatment, a police complaint, seeing a lawyer and applying for a protection order do not require identification, and schools will often admit a child provisionally while paperwork is sorted.
Can I go back to the house for the originals?
Not alone. The police will sometimes accompany someone for that purpose and a court can order documents released as part of proceedings. Both are slower and much safer.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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