SIM Registration: Your 'Military, Authoritative' Orders To Ghanaians Won't Work! - Nana Ofori Cautions Ursula Owusu

The National Chairman of the Progressive People's Party (PPP), Nana Ofori Owusu, has advised the Minister of Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful to review her ways of getting Ghanaians to engage in the ongoing SIM registration exercise with Ghana Card.

The Minister's directive for all Ghanaians to register their SIM cards with the Ghana Card is aimed at organizing a database and clamping down on fraudulent activities.

Ghanaians have up to the end of September to register or risk their SIM cards deactivated.

Contributing to Peace FM's panel discussion programme "Kokrokoo", Nana Ofori Owusu opined that Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful's approach is repulsive and won't yield the required results.

He called on the Minister to be patient with Ghanaians to acquire their Ghana Cards to register their SIM cards as the Executive Secretary of National Identification Authority (NIA), Prof. Ken Agyeman Attafuah says it's impossible to get all Ghanaians to register their SIM cards with Ghana Card by the end of September.

"It is an unrealistic expectation that we will be able to give all of them their cards . . . it is not possible to do that. What is possible, however, is to put in greater efforts and make sure as many as can get it can but to guarantee that every single one is not possible".

"The number of SIM cards linked to the Ghana Cards are less than 15 million and yet we have issued more than 15.5 million, so that's also another factor to consider. Also, by the NCA's own statistics, it has not been possible since October 1st when they began to link all the available Ghana Cards to the SIM cards," Prof. Attafuah said in an interview on the 'Kokrokoo' programme.

Nana Ofori urged the Minister to educate Ghanaians on the significance of the SIM Card re-registration instead of adopting an approach he labeled as "military" to compel Ghanaians to register their SIM cards with the Ghana Card.

"I think she is a brilliant person but she has a shortfall . . . The shortfall is that you communicate to Ghanaians in a form of authoritative or like we are in the military regime. You see the key thing is that you must persuade Ghanaians to understand that this card is essential to our living and to our life that the person would want to go and get it. When you do the military lifestyle of communication, it doesn't augur well."