I registered with NHIS card; my name still on voter roll – Casely-Hayford

Financial analyst Sydney Casely-Hayford has said that even though he registered as a voter in 2012 by presenting a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) identification card, his name had not be expunged from the voter roll.

The re-registration of the voters, whose names were deleted, came to an end Thursday July 28, in line with an order by the Supreme Court of Ghana to the election management body to delete the names because NHIS card did not offer sufficient proof of Ghanaian citizenship.

However, on Saturday July 30, Mr Casely-Hayford, who was a panellist on The Big Issue on Citi FM Saturday July 30, pointed out that his name still existed in the register and had been cleared to vote in the December 7 polls.

This, to him, exposed the lapses of the election-conducting body, which need to be addressed.

“I verified and I am registered. This is just proving categorically to tell you that it (the list of NHIS voters from the EC) is not accurate. I used an NHIS card [to register] and I have not been taken off,” he told the host Umaru Sanda.

He further stated that he could not by himself report that to the EC officials because they had “not recognised me as a non-registered person, they recognise me as someone who was validly registered to vote in Ghana”.

When it was pointed out to him by that he could be wrong and that he may have not used an NHIS card to register by the host of the programme, he stressed: “It is more likely for the EC to be wrong than for me to remember that I did not use an NHIS card to register.”

Commenting on the issue on the same platform, the founder of think tank IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, pointed out that the case indicated that the structures of the EC were flawed.

“Isn’t it curious that what Sidney is suggesting to you betrays the water-tight systems that the EC says it has?” he questioned.

Responding to the issue, the Deputy Communications Officer for the EC, Yussif Alhassan Ayuba, explained that the commission may have to investigate further.

“I am not sure of that unless we verify,” he said.