Prof Ken Attafuah – NIA Boss
The National Identification Authority (NIA) has responded to North Tongu MP Samuel Ablakwa’s description of its work as sloppy and thus enabling “certain characters to entrench their sophisticated conflict of interest machinations.”
The MP had claimed that Rev. Victor Kusi Boateng, former Secretary to the Board of Trustees of the National Cathedral, was able to fraudulently acquire a Ghana Card from the NIA but the registration entity in its reaction explained that applicants who satisfy the requirements for being issued with the citizenship identification are not denied the citizenship document.
Having spelt out the requirements among them a birth certificate, valid passport and others, the NIA reaction notes that it is required by law “to register applicants onto the NIA database, properly called the National Identity Register (NIR), based on the information supplied by applicants.”
On the issue of Kwabena Adu Gyamfi, who the MP claimed is the same as Rev. Victor Kusi Boateng, the NIA states that “contrary to Hon. Ablakwa’s assertions, the following constitutes the facts in the NIR in connection with the issuance of a Ghana Card to Kwabena Adu Gyamfi:
- During the mass registration exercise, Kwabena Adu Gyamfi went to an NIA registration centre called Vicandy School at Asuoyeboah in Kumasi on January 15, 2020 to register for the Ghana Card;
- He submitted to NIA registration officials a valid Ghanaian passport issued by the Passport Office on May 16, 2018, with the name Kwabena Adu Gyamfi; the expiry date in the said passport is May 15, 2023;
- NIA registration officials registered Kwabena Adu Gyamfi using his valid passport as the base identity document for his registration, and duly issued him with a Ghana Card;
- NIA has no record of anyone bearing the name Victor Kusi Boateng in the NIR; and
- NIA has no record in the NIR of any person born on September 7, 1971 or any other day with the name Victor Kusi Boateng.”
“In these circumstances, NIA registration officials at the Vicandy School Registration Centre did everything right, and absolutely nothing wrong,” it added.
The credibility of the national registration exercise which the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament sought to impugn, according to the NIA is untenable. “He is apparently unable to accept the science and law behind the issuance of a Ghana Card to Kwabena Adu Gyamfi,” the NIA jabbed the MP.
The credibility of the entire registration exercise is solidly intact, the NIA asserts, explaining further that “indeed, with stoic determination and focus, NIA has, since 2017, conducted a national identification exercise that has resulted in the capture of the biometrics and alpha-numeric data of over 17.3 million Ghanaians and qualified foreigners in Ghana, each with a unique identity, and issued smart, dual-interface biometric identity cards to over 16 million of them.”
By A.R. Gomda