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National Identification Authority Must Work Again (The Whole Truth About NIA)

By Concerned Staff of the National Identification Authority (NIA)
Press Statement National Identification Authority Must Work Again The Whole Truth About NIA
OCT 26, 2014 LISTEN

... the truth Larry Adjetey (Board Chairman), Dr. Josiah A.M Cobbah (Ag. Executive Secretary), Moses Baiden (CEO Margin Groups of Company) & Josef Iroko (Head, Admin/Legal & Compliance) are not telling the President, Chief of Staff, Parliament and Ghanaians.

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We members of staff are not against NIA going in for SMART CARD, is just that these above named personnel's are not doing due diligence to safeguard the tax payers money but instead safeguard their 'stomach' (KICKBACKS)


Moses Baiden CEO of Margins group is the same people who supplied the Printers for the Printing of the National Identity Cards. It is worth knowing that, out of the 6 printers they supplied 1 has never worked the very day the printers were delivered. It is alleged that the printers were second hand.

We the Concerned Staff of the National Identification Authority (NIA) wish to express our gratitude to the media for exposing to the world the plan of a few selfish Management Staff of the NIA to destroy the hard work we have done over the years despite all the challenges.

The NIA is now ruled by some few selfish Management staff including the Board Chairman (Mr. Larry Adjetey) whom we now refer to as “Upper Management/Senate” who have declared the rest of Management as opposition and so do not involve them in any decision making. Our attempts at staff durbar to have issues cleared to us were always met with contempt and threat of dismissal. We plead with the media to use your platform to clarify some pertinent issues to the people of Ghana.

The NIA officials claimed the current SAFRAN MORPHO system is outmoded and so they need to upgrade. For the records, they are not upgrading the MORPHO system. They are going to buy a new AFIS system under the CIDC Loan Facility. The Morpho system can be upgraded so why is the 'upper management' rejecting MORPHO's offer to do the upgrade of their system with the World Bank facility of $29 million under the e-transform project? MORPHO now has the ten fingerprint system and instant issuance machines. If they had accepted MORPHO's proposal which is not late, NIA will not need to discard the current system that was acquired at a whopping sum of 52 Million Euros in addition to the GHC21 Million used for the mass registration exercise. What NIA should do is to speed up the process of clearing the equipment at the Port which was giving to NIA free of charge by Morpho.

Surprisingly, we are reliably informed that the Executive Secretary briefed Management that the Presidency asked him to halt the expansion of the Foreigners Identification Management System (FIMS) contract with Identity Management System (IMS) but he will not do so until he receives written instruction from the Presidency. A more alarming development is that, while awaiting approval of the new contract from Government, the upper-management has clandestinely asked IMS to pay DERMALOG Germany an amount of $1.5m on behalf of NIA for expansion of the FIMS database to hold 40million records. The plan is to justify that IMS has already committed funds to the project and if the Government stops IMS, they can go for judgment debt and this position was openly stated by the Executive Secretary (ES) of NIA in a meeting with IMS and their lawyers.

So far, no one is checking whether IMS is meeting all the conditions under the FIMS. In fact, any time staff asks questions in regard to that, the Head of Admin/Legal who should be defending NIA rather jump to the defense of IMS. In the first place we wonder why NIA even went under such contract with IMS during the reign of Dr. William Ahadzie. The FIMS project is using the consumables bought by NIA under the MORPHO project, the national service personnel assigned to NIA and the NIA premises at no cost. On top of this, FIMS failed to pay the license fee of $2Million to NIA. We were deceived that the foreigners' cards will be smart; but to our greatest surprise it was the normal 2D barcode card we were capable of printing. NIA under the Mass registration already registered over 40,000 foreigners; why can't NIA print such cards and charge $120 per card, making over $4.8 Million for NIA. The then ES (Dr. William Ahadzie) had a different thoughts.

What worries our minds is that the CIDC project which is supposed to loaned $115 Million to NIA to continue with its mandate include but not limited to (1) the purchase of an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), (2) Capturing of 10 fingerprints and instant smartcard issuance, (3) Purchase of instant printers, (4) the building of a disaster recovery site and so on… The items mentioned form part of the costing of the CIDC project ($115 Million). We are therefore wondering what the allocation of that money will be used for as far as IMS is supposed to take care of such activities with their own money. In a clearer term the loan NIA is seeking under the CIDC should be less than $115 Million; this because part of the components under the CIDC project will be taking care by IMS. It is obvious that all the upper management sought to do is hand over these state resources to their private partner IMS to finance the

citizens re-registration. The question then is “how can the NIA which has the experience of registering over 15 million Ghanaians nationwide and distributed over 1 million cards hand over a 15 million registration contract to a private company which has been able to register only 50,000 foreigners over almost a period of 2 years?”.

Question? : If NIA is getting $115m from CIDC , then what is the use of PPP with IMS? What is IMS bringing on board?

We were informed by some other management members that the Executive Secretary and the Head of Admin/Legal have been holding meetings with World Bank officials and IMS to re-scope the $29Million so they can give it to IMS to do the registration. We were also informed that after working with CIDC since 2010 even before the advent of IMS, our esteemed upper management asked CIDC to enter into partnership with IMS before they can approve their contract. What we are yet to understand is how this partnership will work since CIDC is an identity management technology and equipment manufacturing company and has the reputation of registering and issuing 800million national ID cards to Chinese.

It is no secret within NIA that with just the $29Million World Bank facility, NIA can comfortably complete the system and distribute all cards to Ghanaians and gradually upgrade to a Smart Card. Sadly, the upper-management members are bent on working with only IMS because it is believed some monies have exchanged hands. All that we are saying is, NIA does not need IMS.

While brainstorming on NIA issues we have been asking questions like: Is the management (whole management) lacking common sense? Have we lost our integrity? We are in an institution where there is a huge communication gap between management and members of staff. The saying now among members is “the Authority has become a court with the ES as Judge and the Head of Admin/legal & Compliance as Attorney General”. The management is composed of people who do not trust each other. Even in this issue of $115Million loan facility, 90% of management members are against it been giving to IMS but do not make their views known at management meetings because if you do, the ES will issue threat of silencing you in the Authority. We want management members to resist all wrong doing and use all means to make things right. The cowards should resign.

Last year December ahead of the Christmas festive, we were informed by the Head of Admin/Legal & Compliance Mr Iroko that there was a communiqué from government instructing public institution not to use government funds to procure “hampers”. Due to that, the 5kg rice and 5 liters oil we staffs get at the end of the year was not giving. We were rather invited to the new ES (Dr. Josiah A.M. Cobbah) house for a party. We were surprised to realize later that the Authority sponsored such party. It is so pathetic. Why will the ES and Admin/Legal & Compliance interpret laws to their advantage? To add to this, as soon as our Procurement

Officer resigned, the ES brought the Procurement Officer he worked with at GIMPA without any interview process, offered him the job and an official pick-up.

NIA as it stands now does not have a Professional Security Guard at its premises. Instead, drivers who have no training under security has been asked to be the security guards at the NIA office 24hrs. The most annoying part is, the ES resident is guarded by a private security company which the Authority pays. So we ask, is the ES resident more important than a whole organization that stores Biometric details of citizens? These and more are all happening under the GREAT Josef Iroko who Heads the Admin/Legal & Compliance department. Staff wonder the type of Administration and Human resource skills he posses.

It is alleged that the few management members who are in support with the PPP (IMS) have been given huge sums of money and been promised more if they can help for the contract to go through. It is also alleged that Larry Adjetey has already enjoyed the first kicked back through the FIMS contract and want to enjoy more. No wonder his son is working for Moses Baiden (CEO of Margins Group)

At the last management meeting, the ES promised to weed all those who are not in support of the PPP with IMS out by advertising for Directors in the Dailys so that he can employ people who will ride on the same boat with him. It is alleged that, these people are going to be IMS people who will received Top Up Salaries from IMS when they are employed in NIA.

Finally as the title reads “NIA MUST WORK AGAIN”. For the Authority to grow we must go for the World Bank facility where we are going to print and distribute all the cards to Ghanaians and gradually upgrade to smart card. As practiced in other countries like India, the priority of government should be that, all Ghanaians should have their PIN numbers. We should not rush.

We wish to state categorically that we have lost confidence in Dr. Cobbahs administration. His administration is the worse ever since the establishment of the NIA in 2003.

We therefore appeal to the President to as a matter of urgency, step into the issues of NIA and examine the role of these individuals and the entire Governing Board in bringing NIA to where it is currently.

Thank you

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