Ghana Card: Lawyer sues NIA over digital address requirement

A private legal practitioner, Francis Kojo Kwarteng Arthur, has sued the National Identification Authority (NIA) over its demand for digital address codes as a requirement for acquiring the Ghana Card.

Mr. Arthur is praying the High Court to pronounce that requirement as an illegality.

He told Accra-based Citi FM on Wednesday, 7 November that: “The digital address code is being powered by Ghana Post, so, I got the Ghana Post and Courier Services Act and regulations, I looked through it whether we’ll see anything personalising the digital address code; there was nothing there.

"I’m a lawyer and I’ve been denied. What about the ordinary person on the streets. So then I decided to test it in court.

“I decided to test it because my reading indicated, my research indicated that there is no Act, there is no principal enactment operationalising the digital address code, hence I want the court to declare that the digital address code is an illegality and, hence, prospective applicants or Ghanaian citizens who are willing and present themselves at the NIA to be registered should not be denied the Ghana Card on the basis of not having a digital address code.”