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The incoming New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration intends to complete the National Identification system that was commenced by the erstwhile Kufour administration within its first year in office, President-elect Nana Akufo-Addo has said.

Nana Akufo-Addo, who was speaking at a meeting with the Private Enterprise Federation at the Ghana Institute of Management And Public Administration (GIMPA) said the system will help ensure the country has a solid database.

“The National Identification system is the primary identifier with linkages to the databases of institutions such as the police, the National Health Insurance Scheme, Passport office, immigration, courts, the Ghana Revenue and the Driver Licensing Authority.”

“The process of giving our country a National Identification system began president Kufuor’s time. Eight years later, nothing has been done about it and it is our intention that within the very first year of our mandate, we intend to complete the process of national identification,” the President-elect said.

The National Identification Authority (NIA) was set up by former President John Kufuor in 2003 to manage the identities of Ghanaians and foreign nationals in the country. The NIA was to merge the various national identification documents from the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Passport Office and the Drivers and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) in one database.

IMANI’s challenge Policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, has already listed, among other things, streamlining and harmonising the various identification system as one of the key issues the incoming NPP should address with urgency. This will allow Ghanaians to use one identification card for multiple systems thus removing the inconveniences, inefficiencies and the monetary costs of deploying parallel infrastructure, the think tank has indicated.

IMANI noted, as an example, that the Electoral Commission’s (EC) biometric identification system cost $400m but $250m off this figure could have been cut by harmonising the various identification systems.