Man presents dead wife’s birth certificate for Ghana card registration

The National Identification Authority (NIA) team stationed at the Abeka Cluster of Schools in New Fadama had an unusual request when a man presented the birth certificate of his late wife to be registered.

The man will not take no for an answer and held up the queue for almost an hour, sparking anger among would-be registrants.

The NIA expected to face some challenges during the mass registration exercise but the Fadama team never anticipated a husband would demand to be registered with his spouse’s birth certificate. Funny as the incident was, which could have generated lots of fun and laughter at any other time, the tired residents who had waited hours in the queue for their turn were in no mood for fun.

An eyewitness, Ibrahim Alhassan, told the Ghanacrusader.com the man had waited patiently in the queue and when he got his turn, tired like other residents, produced his wife’s birth certificate on demand for identification.

When he was told the name on the certificate does not match his, he blurted it belonged to his deceased wife but he does not have so he will use hers instead. The man reportedly refused all explanations it is impossible to register using his wife’s birth certificate.

The NIA staff, tired and angry at his insistence, threatened to pack up for the day. Those in front of the queue, however, would have none of that, especially when they were so close to going through the process, the idea of starting all over the next day did not sit well with them.

Sanity was however restored when the focus of the confusion was convinced he could not register with another person’s document and he left grumbling. Supervisor of the exercise, George Commey, in an interview with Ghanacrusader.com indicated the incident was not reported to him but stressed that it is part of their duty and they are ready for the challenges.

He said, “The technical challenges are more worrying because they are sometimes beyond our ability to solve but we are doing our best to ensure the exercise ends smoothly. We tend to have more problems with registrants who are literates than the illiterates. The literates try to tell us how to do our work to confirm to their opinions but we have instructions we are following,” he said.

A resident, Jude Sekley, told Ghanacrusader.com the actions and inactions of the NIA will deny many people the opportunity of going through the process.. He warned that if the Ghana card registration is for good intent then some of the processes and the requirements be looked at again, else many people will not be able to register.