Controversial magazine ‘Africawatch’ has revealed that President Nana Addo’s introduction of the National Identification card (Ghana Card) was mainly to rig the 2020 general election.
President Nana Akufo- Addo inaugurated Ghana’s new National Identification system, on September 15, 2017, in an effort to provide secure authentication and identification for citizens.
But according to Africawatch magazine, the motive behind the introduction of the Ghana card is to undercut the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) strongholds as he [Nana Addo] claims the current register is bloated with foreigners, mostly from Togo, who, it is believed, are more sympathetic to the NDC.
Africawatch in its report claims that Akufo-Addo will try to use his influence on Jean Mensa – Electoral Commission Chairperson – to get the EC to use the Ghana Card to compile a new voters’ register for the 2020 elections.
“There is nothing wrong with cleaning up a voters’ register…but it is quite dangerous for Akufo-Addo’s government to use the Ghana Card to undercut NDC strongholds and then turn around to have the EC use the Ghana Card as the basis for a new voters’ roll so that the NDC will not have the numbers to vote for them in future elections.”
The Ghana card since introduction has received strong opposition and criticism from the NDC describing it as sham.
However, The National Identification Authority (NIA) has also failed to register the entire population in the Greater-Accra Region within the three to four months deadline it gave when the exercise was launched.
The exercise, which began at Jubilee House on June 4, 2018, after a one week delay due to technical challenges, has only managed to register 80,817 citizens working in specialised institutions or Key Influencers as the NIA puts it.
Four months into the exercise, the NIA has not registered a single member of the general population.
By: Joseph Nii Ankrah
