The National Identification Authority (NIA) has urged the general public to disregard a Facebook post by Honorary Vice President of policy think tank, Imani Africa, Bright Simons on the Ghana Card artwork.
A statement, signed by the Ag. Head of Corporate Affairs, Dr Abudu Abdul-Ganiyu, said that “the post should be regarded as a mix of half-truth, insinuation, self-praise and alarmism.”
Mr Simons, in a social media post, alleged: “How many are even aware that until recently the Ghana Card brand design itself was not even owned by Ghana? That it was owned by a French company & the country had to pay to get it? When Civil Society scrutinises your government, be grateful. There’s a war for the soul of your country.”
But to the NIA, the controversy the said post has generated is wholly needless and destructive.
“The artwork for the Ghana Card was designed by SAGEM MORPHO (now IDEMIA) of France which won the contract for the production of the first generation of Ghana Cards in 2008.
“The said artwork is the same one used for the Ghana Cards issued under the Foreigner Identification Management System (FIMS) to qualified foreigners lawfully resident in Ghana and the current generation of Ghana Cards,” the statement indicated.
According to the NIA, the artwork was acquired because it wanted to have sovereign control over it, multi-nationalise it with the ECOWAS Card, and get IMS II to evolve it in the best interest of Ghana.
“The current Ghana Card artwork was produced by Intelligent Card Production Systems Limited (ICPS) a wholly owned subsidiary of the Margins ID Group (the only Integraf Certified facility in Africa to Central Bank Level).
“Under the direction of NIA/IMS II, ICPS redesigned the Ghana Card to reflect the evolution of the card from a 2-D bar code card to a high security, ultra-modern, dual-interface, chip-embedded, multi-functional identity card combined with the mandatory security features of the ECOWAS Electronic Machine Readable Travel Document/card (e-MRTD),” a portion of the statement read.