Member of Parliament for Tamale North, Alhassan Suhuyini, has revealed that the National Identification Authority (NIA) is not mandated to register people for the purposes of voting during elections, following the proposed use of the Ghana card as requirement in the voter’s registration exercise by the Electoral Commission.

According to him, the onus lies on the Electoral Commission to oversee such exercise. He revealed that the NIA in its current state is bedeviled with challenges necessitated by the lack of funds in issuing out Ghana Cards to the teeming number of Ghanaians yet to acquire theirs.

Mr Suhuyini noted that although the finance minister, Ken Ofori Atta, has promised that the NIA will print more cards as government has made some GHC100 million to clear part of its debt, the move to engage the Authority in the process is belated.

“The NIA is not mandated to register people for the purposes of voting. So, if the electoral Commission, which has the mandate to register people for the purposes of voting were to be getting this money from the finance minister because it wants to prepare for the next election, it would have been understandable.”
Alhassan Suhuyini

Mr Suhuyini stated that considering the “sensitive” nature of NIA’s job, one would have thought that the decision should have been made by the finance minister to engage the Authority long ago, if the intention was to get it to carry out the mandate. He reckoned that if that was properly carried out, it would have even helped government increase its revenue.

“… Because then you’re able to identify citizens properly and tax them appropriately. So, if after all these years, a policy that has the potential of increasing government’s revenue, has been starved of funds by the finance minister, only for him to give that policy financial support, when the policy is now linked to the process of voting, anybody in the electoral process should be suspicious…”
Alhassa Suhuyini

Elaborating on the aversion by the minority to the Electoral Commission’s proposition of a Constitutional Instrument to make Ghana Card the sole document in registering citizens in the voters’ exercise, Mr Suhuyini emphasized that the Ghana Card and its usage is not a problem, but how the Ghana Card is intended to be used by the Electoral Commission is the problem.

He emphasized that as a party, the NDC has repeatedly stated that it has nothing against the Ghana Card being one of the documents that can be used for the purpose of registering Ghanaians to carry out their constitutional mandate of voting. However, he explained that considering the current state of the country and given the challenges that the National Identification Authority is going through when it comes to providing people with this document, the party reckons it is “unfair to make it the only requirement” for the purposes of registering people to vote.

“It is unfair, it is unreasonable, given the challenges the NIA is going through currently when it comes to providing the Cards for Ghanaians to make it the only requirement.”
Alhassan Suhuyini

EC can rely on other source documents

Alternatively, the Tamale North legislator proposed that the Electoral Commission can resort to the use of the guarantor system as its Chairperson, Jean Mensa, on the floor parliament, admitted that the guarantor system of the NIA is “more foolproof compared to the guarantor system” of the Electoral Commission. He further questioned why it is difficult for the Electoral Commission to include the guarantor system in the C.I and use the same process as the NIA if it has found the Authority’s move praiseworthy.

“So, it beats one’s imagination why she will not then adopt the guarantor system that the NIA is using so that we can improve upon whatever she wants to improve upon when it comes to the mandate of the EC to register people for the purposes of voting…
“We are saying that there are other alternatives. There’s also the use of the birth certificates. For purposes of elections, if we are not careful, we are going to get to a point where it is going to become very difficult even to identify or define who a Ghanaian is.”
Alhassan Suhuyini

Mr Suhuyini highlighted that because of political expediency, there is a tendency to keep “shifting the goalpost” on how to identify a Ghanaian. He further noted that the focus on the Ghana Card makes people suspicious, especially given the situation that the NIA finds itself in.

“To make it worse, when you have the finance minister, who is unable to raise money to pay bondholders whose investments are due, he’s unable to raise monies to pay capitation grants for schools to run efficiently… But all of a sudden, he says he can get the money available for the National Identification Authority to carry out a mandate that has been given it… It adds to the suspicion.”
Alhassan Suhuyini