IMANI-Ghana, a policy think-tank, has disclosed that some “vested interests” want to presume upon the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) policy of government to impose additional projects under the National Identity Project.

A statement issued by the center for policy and education said the National Identification Authority (NIA) needs salvation from the “vested interests”.

Below is the unedited statement:

The National Identification Authority Needs Salvation from Vested Interests:

Below are some very troubling emerging facts:

1. The Minister of State at the Presidency, Dr. Mustapha Ahmed is reported to have written to the NIA to stop the registration exercise in the THREE Northern Regions because the ongoing exercise captures only four finger prints.

This is after the NIA has conducted registration of same in 7 regions out of 10 in the country. The NIA has spent Ghc.2m training 3600 adjunct field staff and 700 students to complete the exercise in the three Northern regions. Registration began last week and was set to continue this week. But this fiat cancels all....

2. Preliminary investigations reveal that some vested interests are bent on using the now vaunted Public Private Partnership (PPP) policy to impose a US$15m project to capture five finger prints instead of four. The crucial question is would this new bio data project be applied to the rest of the country seeing as the NIA has completed the laborious registration of millions in 7 regions of the country over the last three years?

3. Foreign Nationals are set to be re-registered again. This is because some vested interests have imposed a self-budgeted US$32m project on the NIA to ensure that 350,000 foreign nationals are re-registered at a new fee of US$ 120 per person. This comes up to US$42m in revenue to the vested interests.

These interests have promised to pay a fee of $2m only to the NIA and have actually advanced $500,000 even before the suspicious project began to the NIA to undertake ONLY PUBLIC EDUCATION ON REGISTERING FOREIGN NATIONALS. And the vested interests only got this project under SOLE-SOURCING. NO COMPETITIVE BIDDING. THEY PROMISED 400 data capturing machines, but has since delivered 60, yet they claim they have invested $32m so far in the project.