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01.09.2015 Opinion

Ghana's Quest For Clean Voters Registe: The Role Of National Identification System

By Stephen L. Mensah
Ghana's Quest For Clean Voters Registe: The Role Of National Identification System
01.09.2015 LISTEN

Ghana's democracy has been one of the best in sub saharan africa. the country has gone series of elections peacefully since 1992 under the fourth Republic, which has not been organised on a silver platter but through a lot of electoral reforms getting us to this far.

However the need for a strong and efficient system to make out voters register clean from all kinds of manipulations can be achieved through having a national database on all citizens whose data on birth are captured right after delivery.

The role of national identification database system in solving much of our problem in managing records in our

education, health, social security and elections, which is the subject of discussion cannot be overlooked. with national identification the country would not have to occasionally register new voters who are eligible to vote by eighteen years, but rather from our database we would be able to tell those Ghanaians who are eligible to vote and issue out voters identification cards to them. If our voters register is organised from the national identification database and issued out to the electoral commission for elections.

I think it will bring sanity into our elections and do away the periodic organisation of new votera register. In addition other government institutions can rely largely on records from tha national database for its operations.

For instance the national health insurance authority and the social security and national insurance trust wouldn't have to collect new data on Ghanaians for their operations, since it is already captured on the national database.

This system is been practiced in many western countries which make their data for practical use very

credible. concluding my piece, I want to encourage the government of ghana to quickly prioritise digital collection of data on all Ghanaians and issue out national identification cards to Ghanaians which will distinguish from other nationals and posterity will benefits massively from its.

Stephen L. Mensah

email: [email protected]

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