The Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority (NIA), Professor Kenneth Agyemang Attafuah says tragedy loom if Ghana does not use the national identity card for the 2020 polls.
According to him, he cannot understand the reason why the Ghana Card cannot be used for the presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2024
He said the Authority has done so much work on the Ghana Card for the Electoral Commission to use its system for the next presidential and parliamentary elections to be held in Ghana.
The boss of NIA pointed out that several Ghanaians have been issued with the national ID which clearly shows that the card can and ought to be used for the 2024 and other elections in the future.
The use of the Ghana Card in any way, shape or form in the 2024 elections has become a contentious matter. Members of the Minority Caucus in Parliament have vowed to oppose any legislation brought to the House by the Electoral Commission authorising the use of the card as a voter ID.
Professor Attafuah told journalists at a press soirée organised by the Authority at its offices in Accra on Friday 18 November 2022.
“Speaking for myself, I think it will be a tragedy if we do not [use the Ghana Card for Election 2024]. There is no reasonable basis in my view for that not to happen.
“NIA has registered 17.3 million of a projected 19 million people – 17.3 million of the population 15 years and above, so that [of] those who are going to fall into the category of people eligible to register and vote by age 18, a lot of them have already been captured.
“We still have a certain margin of approximately two million. Those two million people who have not registered, if they desire to register, there is no reason why they cannot be registered within a maximum of six months. And we are talking 2024 – some two clear years to the day the Electoral Commission would say we are closing the registration,” Professor Attafuah said.
The NIA head further indicated that because the NIA’s registration process “is a continuous registration throughout our dear nation, with 292 registration centres available” across the country, there is no impediment that can constraint the Authority from fulfilling its mandate to the Ghanaian people in order to allow the Ghana Card to be used for the next and future general elections.
“NIA has shown the capacity to open additional registration points and if it becomes necessary and warranted, those are measures that NIA will reintroduce. But from our calculation and from the numbers that remain, such a move will be completely unnecessary.
“I want to assure you [the journalists present] and the entire nation that if the Electoral Commission decides, if Parliament grants the Electoral Commission’s wish and gives it the go ahead to use the Ghana Card, NIA is poised to give cards to those whose cards are printed and are staying in backlog and to register and issue cards to those who have not yet registered for the Ghana Card,” Professor Attafuah said.
“There is ample time, there is solid technical expertise or competence, and there is the leadership and the will. It is a matter of that those who have not gotten it will get [the Ghana Card] and they will get it way ahead of EC’s own timelines,” he added.
By Vincent Kubi