Up to 1.1million voters in the Upper East and Upper West regions are on course to be denied the right to vote in the 2020 elections because of the problematic decision by the National Identification Authority (NIA) and the Electoral Commission (EC) to reinvent the wheel in the matter of the voters’ register to use for the upcoming elections.
With the EC and the NIA acting together to recompile a register for the election with the national ID card (Ghana Card) and passports as the breed documents, the NIA has somehow managed to issue cards to only 5.17% of the adult population in the Upper West region.
In the Upper East region, only 6.36% of the adult population have been issued cards.
Numerically, 663,508 voters in the Upper West Region and 447,964 in the Upper East region have not been issued cards, placing them in the category of people who cannot register to vote if the EC’s moves to make only the Ghana Card and passports as the acceptable documents for registration go through.
For many observers, the development in the Upper East and Upper West regions were calculated as part of a grand scheme to rig the 2020 election for the ruling NPP. The Upper east and the Upper West are strongholds of the opposition NDC and curiously, all strongholds of the NDC, Ghana Card issuance rates are low compared card issuance rates in Ashanti and Eastern regions which are the strongholds of the NPP.
The opposition NDC has been regretting that the plan to disenfranchise many in its strongholds was allowed to bud when it first started with Vice President Bawumia, who was then Running Mate to Akufo-Addo in opposition, claiming that the voters’ register was bloated with over 1million names of foreign nationals.
The Bawumia campaign had led to a lawsuit which compelled the Electoral Commission to delete some 50,000 voters from the voters’ register because these voters had registered with the National Health Insurance Scheme cards. Subsequently, however, these voters were given the opportunity to re-register onto the voters’ register using other forms of identity.