A human rights lawyer, Dr Kenneth Agyeman Attafuah, has backed the Supreme Court’s ruling that National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) cards cannot be used as proof of one’s identity as a Ghanaian, dismissing assertions that Thursday’s ruling amounted to the infringement of the rights of persons who used such cards for registration.

Ghana’s apex court on May 5, 2016, ordered the Electoral Commission of Ghana to expunge from the voter roll, names of persons who used NHIS cards as proof of their nationality in the 2012 registration, as well as minors and the deceased. The court ordered the EC to re-register the affected persons by using their appropriate national ID cards.

Speaking on Accra100.5FM’s Ghana Yensom on Friday May 6, Dr Attafuah, who is the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the Central University College, explained that the card was only a means of accessing healthcare, and given that many aliens had illegally obtained such cards to access healthcare in the country, it could not be counted on as a credible means of proving one’s citizenship.

Asked if the ruling trampled on the rights of persons who used such cards in registering, the criminologist responded: “Absolutely not. The law was clear. The National Health Insurance [Scheme] card is not one of the valid national identification cards. It is a card for accessing a particular kind of service and it has been found to be grotesquely abused such that a lot of people who are not nationals of this country have obtained it as it will enable them access free healthcare in Ghana.

“So, it is not a credible basis for identifying who is a Ghanaian and who is not a Ghanaian. So, if you are a genuine Ghanaian and it is said that that card you used to register is no more valid, so go and re-register, you have no problem. All you have to do is to go there and present your birth certificates or other documents the Supreme Court has deemed as a valid modality for identifying citizens of Ghana.

“If you have neither of these, the law has provided that a relative or other persons who can attest to your citizenship should accompany you to the polling station. It is simple, you don’t lose anything. If there is anything at all, it is just the temporary inconvenience of going to register; only you didn’t use a system of identification that was proper and valid at the time you did it.”

Prof Attafuah said affected persons would be “only correcting an error” by complying with the Supreme Court to be registered anew as voters.

“It is not a violation of human rights, and the registration process is not a kind of fundamental right being taken away from you forever; you are still being given the opportunity, the opportunity is still available to you to go and register. You may suffer inconvenience but not a loss of rights,” the legal practitioner said.