As it hands bigger deal to a private company IMS: despite its failure in a previous contract.

The National Identification Authority (NIA) has handed over a juicy contract to private company Identity Management System (IMS) to register over 15 million Ghanaians under the National Identification System (NIS), the Republic has gathered.

This is despite the fact that one year on, Identity Management System (IMS) has failed to register the over 700,000 foreign nationals in Ghana as officially indicated by Ghana Immigration Service data; hence, they have failed to settle its US$2 million license fees upfront as stipulated in its contract with NIA and has failed to provide its part of financial resources for undertaking the contract under the Private Public Partnership (PPP) with the NIA.

This failure has allegedly forced the NIA to go cup-in-hand to the World Bank and the Chinese Exim Bank to source funds of about US$200 million to gather data and roll out national identification cards for Ghanaians.

The NIA has been fraught with operational challenges since 2003 when it was set up: most of these challenges are bordered on a perennial lack of financial resources to undertake its mandate of registering people for the NIS. This forced the NIA to adopt a Public Private Partnership (PPP) where a private company was invited to take up the responsibility of registering foreigners while the NIA focused on registering Ghanaians. IMS was awarded the contract in mid 2012 and was required to bring in equipment, finances necessary for its operations.

However, since mid 2012 to date, IMS has only been able to register about 50,000 foreign nationals out of the more than 500,000 currently in Ghana. It is unclear as to how long it will take the privately owned Ghanaian company to complete the registration process for 15 million Ghanaians.

Critics have questioned the rationale why IMS has been given the ‘Lions share’ of the contract despite failing to speed up registration of foreign nationals and also, despite the fact that several other companies from Ghana, Germany, Ukraine, Belgium, Switzerland and Malaysia have expressed interest in registering Ghanaians whose official census figures indicates are barely 25 million people.

The NIA admits in a yet-to-be-released statement intercepted by this newspaper saying “NIA is currently discussing the second license with a number of local and foreign identity management companies. NIA has received proposals from interested vendors from Ghana, Germany, Ukraine, Belgium, Switzerland and Malaysia.”

The Republic newspaper can confirm that some individuals on the Board of the NIA are extremely unhappy about the NIA’s favoritism of IMS, particularly when it is clear that the private company does not have the financial muscle to deploy the required number of equipment needed to carry out the mass ID card project.

Indeed, insiders have confided in this paper that after damning media reportage about NIA’s operations, the NIA has decided to issue a statement to clear the air.

Interestingly, sources have disclosed to this paper that the statement was drafted by an IMS official.

The statement was allegedly drafted by one Marco Mensah, a private consultant to IMS.

Mr. Mensah formerly worked with the NIA under the former CEO William Ahadzi, but resigned when he was posted outside Accra and later got a contract with IMS.

Following The Republic newspaper’s expose on the undisclosed activities by the authorities of the NIA, this paper can confirm that there has been behind the scene moves by top guns at the NIA and IMS to launch propaganda at The Republic to cover up their malfeasance.

Since the commencement of the Private Public Partnership (PPP) project with IMS coded as the ‘FIMS’ project in June 2013, IMS has made significant windfalls while the ailing National Identification Authority (NIA) has seen huge revenue slips through its fingers.

For instance, there is a US$120 service charge slapped on each foreign national registered by IMS, yet the NIA is handed a paltry US$23 out of this amount.

When questioned by the Republic why IMS has failed to settle its license fees despite the huge windfall made from registering foreign nationals, the CEO, Moses Baiden explained that his company only paid US$500,000 of the amount because state institutions like the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) who were supposed to give IMS access to database of foreigners in Ghana failed to oblige by them; thereby, forcing the company to resort to its own ingenuity to source the required data of foreigners in Ghana.

However, inquiries by this paper about the whereabouts of the money IMS paid as part of its license fees cannot be traced.

Bertha Dzeble, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the NIA had no idea of what the money was used for when approached by this paper. The source from the NIA board charged that the refusal to settle the US$2 million was a clear breach of contract.

It is alleged that the NIA is basically being run by a tiny group of people, composed of the Executive Secretary, Dr. Josiah Cobbah, the Board Chairman, Lawyer Larry Adjeitey and the Head of Legals, Joseph Iroko.

Identity Management System (IMS) is made up of Ghanaian Security Card Company and the International Danish Financial Group (IDFG), under an operational name, IMS, but it appears different interest groups within official are tussling to offload NIA’s responsibility to FIMS. More than Ghc450m has so far been blown on the project which is almost a white elephant.

Intercepted email conversation between Dr. Cobbah and Mr. Baiden indicates that the 15 million contracts to IMS is already a done deal as the two discuss card specifications for Ghanaian IDs.