While the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is posturing against the planned use of the National Identification Card (Ghana Card) for voter registration, Whatsup News can report that the Akufo Addo administration lacks the courage to push the plan through.
This is because reliable information from NIA indicates that Cal-Bank has frozen some 800,000 cards due to the Akufo Addo administration’s non-payment of some US$58m, million owed it.
Also, some 44,000 cards have not been printed even though registration has been completed.
Cal Bank is one of the banks tasked to pre-finance the Ghana Card, but it is facing daily frustration convincing the government to release funds to settle its agreed obligations.
Meanwhile, at the National Identification Authority (NIA), some three million cards have already been printed but have not been distributed because the government is said to have not made available resources for the distribution.
This brings to a total of about four million Ghana Cards wasting away at the NIA.
The pussy-footing by the Akufo Addo administration to release resources necessary for the distribution of the cards which are being touted as the one-stop identification for all transactions in Ghana,, including voting.
Recently, the Executive Secretary of the NIA, Prof. Kenneth Agyemang Attafuah, disclosed that some 15.7 million Ghanaians have so far been issued out of the 16,535,623 printed.
But according to reliable information from inside sources, over 19 million Ghana Cards are ready for distribution, but the Akufo Addo administration is simply not showing interest in getting those cards to recipients.
Sources explained that any government could have easily retired the Cal Bank debt by raising money from the ongoing mobile telephony SIM card registration currently ongoing.
The government could also have allowed the telcos to directly access the biometric data of registrants from the biometric database of the NIA and registered them from there and charged the savings made by the Telcos to pay off its Ghana Card debt obligations.
However, the government has taken a more dubious route.
The Communication Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful and the NIA have refused the telcos full access to the NIA data and are asking them to re-register Ghanaians by collecting their biometric data afresh using a platform provided by the fraudulent Kelni GVG for the process. In return, Kelni GVG is the one that is collecting the monies being charged by the telcos for the SIM card re-registration.
Whatsup News gathered that the security infrastructure of the cards are so fool-proof that any attempt to use it to rig the 2024 general elections as suspected by the NDC, will fail.
Critics tell Whatsup News that it is this realisation that has forced the government to put the brakes on its bluff with the Ghana Cards. The government reportedly realises that with a foolproof Ghana Card used for voters registration combined with the economic collapse that the Akufo Addo government has caused, there is no way the government can win the 2024 elections as it is pushing in its “Breaking the 8” agenda.
These factors may work in favour of the opposition party if the Electoral Commission (EC) insists and push the Ghana Card as the sole document for voters’ registration.
However, the NDC’s opposition to that prospect may stem from the fact that most of the places hit hardest by the non-distribution of NIA cards are the traditional strongholds of the opposition party.
However, given the odds of the collapsed economy and the fact that the Akuffo Addo administration won the last election by gathering just about 6.7 million votes, some 16 million eligible voters who have received their Ghana Cards may pose a mortal danger to the incumbent government’s plan to break the jinx of the usual eight-year term all previous administrations endured before getting kicked out.