The National Identification Authority (NIA) is advocating the use of the Ghana Card for identification of voters in the 2024 general elections.
According to Professor Ken Attafuah, Executive Secretary of NIA, it would be a disservice to the country if the Ghana Card was not used for identifying voters during the exercise.
He has therefore urged the Electoral Commission (EC) to work towards attaining the necessary Parliamentary approval to make the Ghana Card part of the electoral process.
He was speaking in Accra on Friday during a meeting with editors of the various media organisations.
The meeting was to update the editors on the various activities being undertaken by the Authority.
Prof. Attafuah said the NIA was ready and would be able to issue the Ghana Card to all eligible voters given the needed support.
“It will be a great disservice to Ghana should any other card aside from the Ghana Card be used for the elections.
“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,” he added.
The Executive Secretary said the NIA have the data of 17.3 million of the population who are 15 years and above adding that a lot of the people who fall into the category of people eligible to register and vote by age 18 were already captured.
He indicated that the NIA, could within six months register an estimated two million of eligible voters who were yet to be captured in the database.
“We still have a certain margin of approximately two million eligible voters 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 of 2024, some two clear years to the day the EC would say we are closing the registration,” Prof. Attafuah stated.
The NIA, he said, would ensure that no eligible voter was disenfranchised should the EC decide to use the Ghana Card and Parliament gives it the needed approval.
He noted that the NIA was poised to print out the cards of applicants who had registered and register new applicants as well.
On November 19, he indicated that, the NIA commenced the registration of 10,603 refugees resident in the country, adding that the Authority would register Ghanaians in the Diaspora beginning February 2023 Also, the registration of children below the age of 15 years and Ghanaians in places of detention and asylum would be done next year.
BY CLAUDE NYARKO ADAMS
