Thousands of fake national IDs uncovered by Ghana card technical partners

The collaborators of the National Identification Authority (NIA) responsible for overseeing the production of Ghana cards have unveiled a substantial number of counterfeit national IDs.

Margins Group, the overseeing body, disclosed that they made this revelation subsequent to cross-referencing data from the Ghana card with various national identity documents, including passports, health insurance cards, and driver’s licenses.

Addressing a

Read full articlejoint parliamentary committee of Subsidiary Legislation and Defence and Interior, the Chief Software Development Officer of the group, Andrew Asamoah, expressed concerns over the credibility of these national identity documents due to the discovery.

Asamoah highlighted instances where approximately 45,000 passports, 130,000 NHIS cards, 45,000 driver’s licenses, and 166,000 SSNIT cards were found to be non-existent in their respective databases.

He elaborated that these falsified documents had been submitted to the NIA during the registration process, which was not initially detected in the field due to the secure database operation. However, upon further validation, these discrepancies were identified.

Moreover, Asamoah pointed out that certain voter's ID card numbers were utilized for multiple Ghana card registrations by distinct individuals across different locations and time frames within the country, indicating underlying data silo issues that the Ghana Card aims to address.

Meanwhile, Moses Baiden, the CEO of Margins Group, refuted allegations of data selling, affirming that the government exclusively owns and accesses the information. He emphasized that the central databases are under the ownership of the Ghanaian government, clarifying the role of Margins Group as technical partners working in collaboration with the government.