85% of the adult population have registered for the Ghana Card – NIA

The National Identification Authority (NIA) has touted that the Ghana Card registration has been a success as 85% percent of the adult population in the country have registered for the card.

This was disclosed by the Head of Corporate Affairs at NIA, Abudu Abdul-Ganiyu, when he was interviewed by Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show.

“We have registered over 15 million Ghanaians so far and out of this number we have issued over 14 million cards. People must understand that this phase of registration included 16 years and above. We refer to these people as the adult population because they need a smart identity card to go through all the services that are mandatory,” he said.

According to him, comparing the number of people registered to the whole adult population, it is safe to conclude that “we have done about 85 percent of the adult population.”

He added that the remaining 15% are in the process of getting their cards at the various centres.

Abudu was of the view that some may view the process as unsuccessful but from where the country started to where it is now, it will be very unfair to describe the process as unsuccessful.

He further assured, “We know the challenges that we have been through in the past but now we have progressed to the point that we can say the project has finally succeeded. We will soon get to the end of the whole exercise where we would have registered all Ghanaians and then all the benefits that we will need to derive from the national identification system will work.”

The Ghana card registration commenced in April 2019. The exercise was piloted in the Greater Accra Region and later rolled out in the other 15 regions. It was suspended during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic but resumed after the restrictions were eased.

Meanwhile, the government is currently embarking on a SIM card re-registration exercise using the Ghana Card as the only identification requirement.