<<Print>>

A former Executive Director of the National Identification Authority (NIA), Professor Kenneth Agyeman Attafuah has expressed support for the need to spend more money to ensure that the national identification process succeeds. However, he thinks that before any more money is pumped into the exercise, there ought to be a probe into the circumstances that has led to the inability of the NIA to distribute the over 13million cards of people it had already registered and have their information in their database. �We�ve got to probe what got us here. Why have we come to this destination that so much money has gone down the drain? We ought to do that in order that we can retool our governance structures and ensure that accountability is not just rhetoric, accountability is substantive,� he said in an interview on Joy FM Thursday morning. The NIA has decided to undertake a fresh registration of all Ghanaians under what it described as an �expanded registration project.� The decision comes six years after the authority began a mass registration exercise, completing it in seven regions and parts of the three northern regions; and card distribution exercises in parts of the Greater Accra Region. So far, Ghana has spent about GH�21,621,075 on the mass registration and card distribution exercises. To implement its plans and make self-sufficient, the authority has successfully negotiated a $115 million facility from Exim China, which is awaiting approval by Cabinet and Parliament for the fresh registration. There have been public criticisms on why the NIA wants to spend more money to do a fresh registration. But the authority has explained it was necessary because the new and expanded exercise will enable it to meet the biometric data requirements of all the user agencies. Besides it said it ought to change with technology if it were to be able to achieve its statutory mandate. Professor Attafuah who worked at the NIA in 2008 and 2009, taking over from Professor Ernest Dumor during his interview on Joy FM Thursday morning said he had gathered from some workers that basically systems at the NIA had broken down presently. This, he said could partly be attributed to the delay in the release of funds to the authority, misconduct of employees and frequent changes in leadership. �At the end of the day, because of the delays, equipment obsoletes set in, they became irrelevant and I understand from some of the workers that basically the system has broken down.� �That coupled with the financial crunch that we seem to find ourselves, necessitate our looking elsewhere and I think that Public Private Partnership is reasonable option in the circumstances.� He noted however, that the project should not be manhandled and that it must continue since it served as a national repository of data for government. �It was still necessary that identity cards be produced for Ghanaians and foreigners. The project should not be abandoned. The project must continue.� �So I support the idea of our spending money to get what we ought to have �but the cost of it I cannot speak because I have been away from this business since 2009 and indeed I have studiously remained silent about NIA, I have tried hard to avoid a situation of perception of sour grapes or anything.�