NIA investigating over 100,000 Ghana Card holders for attempting multiple registrations

The National Identification Authority (NIA) has disclosed that it is investigating more than 100,000 Ghana Card holders for allegedly attempting to register multiple times.

The NIA’s Executive Secretary, Prof. Kenneth Attafuah, stated before the Assurances Committee of Parliament that while the organization has successfully registered around 18.2 million Ghanaians in the national registration, roughly 560,000 cards have not yet been distributed.

“In the case of total enrollments, 18, 145, 839 Ghanaians registered onto the national identity register, and the total number of cards printed is indicated at 17.882 million, and the total issued 17,323,416.”

“Mr Chairman, the total number of cards not issued to Ghanaians as at the date of compilation of this report, which was the 20th of August 2024 is 559,457 and cards that have been cleared and ready to be printed stands at 151,896.”

“We have a total of 110,936 as a number of Ghanaians who have attempted multiple registrations, and therefore, whose cards have gone into delinquency and are being investigated,” he said.

Registration of Ghanaians living abroad

The NIA also disclosed that Ghanaians residing overseas are now eligible to use its registration services. The foreign registration program will be piloted in Ottawa, Canada, by the Authority in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration.

“We chose Canada for a strategic reason. We wanted a place where we would test the robustness, the acuteness of the technical system that we’ve designed in partnership with our technical partners. We wanted a place where the majority of the people who will come before us seeking to register will be persons possessing the two fundamental of these documents, birth certificate or a passport.”

This is a significant development as Ghanaians living abroad can get their Ghana Cards. It is not clear why some Ghana Card holders attempted to register multiple times, but we await the outcome of the NIA investigations into the over a hundred thousand citizens who have allegedly attempted to register several times.