Elephant in the room: Are both Dr. Bawumia and Yayra Koku LIARS or TRUTHFUL?

 

By Samuel Dowuona

In February 2022, the then Vice President of Ghana, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, a man widely designated as Ghana's digitalization champion, made a bold declaration that the Ghana Card is recognized in 44,000 airports across the world as a valid form of ID for Ghanaians traveling into Ghana. 

This statement triggered a barrage of attacks on the Vice President. He was called a liar. In fact one of the attacks that easily comes to memory was from one NDC Communicator - Bernard Oduro Takyi during a talk show on Kesben TV. He described the Vice President as a "serial, chronic and supersonic liar." Take note that prior to that, the Vice President had been called a liar for several other statements he made in that past, so much so that even Google searches on "who is the biggest liar in Ghana" always threw up his name. So, the attacks on him with respect to the declaration on Ghana Card being recognized in 44,000 airports globally, perfectly fitted into the narrative then.

As a tech journalist, I had a duty to look beyond Dr. Bawumia's claims and in fact the attacks on him and do my own investigations about whether the Ghana Card had any e-passport features, whether those features have been activated, and what it means to say that Ghana Card is recognized as a valid form of ID for travel into Ghana from 44,000 airports across the world. Those answers did not lie in the mouth of politicians and their surrogates, but with technocrats. So, I spoke with the technocrats, particular those behind the design and implementation of the Ghana Card, on grounds of anonymity for obvious reasons.

The following are cogent and verbatim responses I got from the technocrats:

The Ghana Card has a special computer chip inside it. That chip can be recognized by airport machines around the world, just like the chip inside modern passports. But when people say the Ghana Card is “accepted in 44,000 airports,” they do not exactly mean you can travel everywhere using only the Ghana Card like a normal passport. (And Dr. Bawumia never said that)

What they really mean is:

• Airport machines around the world can read and recognize the Ghana Card’s chip.
• The card follows international rules made by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the world body that sets airport travel standards.
• The card can prove that it is a real Ghana government document.

But there is an important difference between:

1. A document being recognized by machines, and
2. A document being fully accepted for travel.

Right now, most countries still require a normal passport booklet, visas, passport stamps, and systems built for paper passports. So, even though the Ghana Card is technologically advanced, many countries are not yet ready to use it as a full travel document.

Is the Ghana Card now an e-passport?

Not fully yet.

The newer Ghana Cards have technology that works like an electronic passport, but most countries do not yet allow people to travel using only the Ghana Card for a number of reasons - the need for visas, entry stamps and immigration records, bilateral and multilateral international agreements, and border control systems to make it work.

Most countries built their travel systems around passport books for decades. So, even if the Ghana Card is technologically advanced, many countries’ laws and systems still expect a passport booklet.

So, what part of the Ghana Card is recognized internationally?

The chip and digital information inside the card can be read and verified by airport systems around the world.

How did we then get the Ghana Card to be recognized, read and verified by ICAO systems in 44,000 airports around the world?

Ghana's country digital signature from the country's Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) held by NITA, is registered on the ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD), which verifies all e-passports digitally signed by countries whose certificates are registered on the ICAO directory. Ghana Card has an e-passport profile on it signed digitally with the country’s certificate and can therefore be read by all ICAO systems at all airports worldwide, and verified at such at all airports.

Ghana’s new e-passport (the chip-embedded passport book) also has its e-passport system signed by the same digital signature of Ghana’s PKI as the Ghana Card.

Now this is key:

1. ⁠The first Ghana Card was READ ONLY, so the e-passport and its certificate digitally signed can be read by all ICAO systems as an Electronic Machine Readable Travel Document (e-MRTD). The new chip on both the Ghana Card and chip-embedded passports is ICAO 2.0 compliant, and can be read and written to, so an e-visa can be written to it.
2. ⁠ So, even though you can travel to Ghana from anywhere with the Ghana Card, and it is fully recognized within ECOWAS, because government of Ghana has mandated it, it needs to be agreed between countries or adopted worldwide for use like the passport book to travel out of Ghana and ECOWAS. The world is not there yet, a few countries have e-passport cards digitally signed and registered on the ICAO PKD.

So, simply put, at the time Dr. Bawumia made the declaration, the e-passport feature on the Ghana Card could already be read and validated with any ICAO reading system (be it an app on a mobile phone or a machine/device seated at the airport) at the various airports around the world. It was, and still is, therefore recognized as a travel document within ECOWAS, and to facilitate the return of Ghanaians to Ghana from across the world, but not as a travel document from out of Ghana.

Back in 2022, when some of us did that story and said that the technocrats had confirmed the veracity of Dr. Bawumia's claims, we were also accused of supporting Dr. Bawumia's lies because at the time, the Ghana Immigration Service had issued a statement to say that as far as they were concerned, the Ghana Card is not replacing the regular passport for the very reasons the technocrats gave - the need for visas, immigration records, border control, and international agreements to facilitate that kind of system. But it still did not change the fact that ICAO systems at airports around the world recognized and still recognize the Ghana Card, at least the readable part, as an e-MRTD.

NIA Boss Yayra Koku to Bawumia's rescue?

More than four years after Dr. Bawumia had been called a "serial, chronic and supersonic liar", for this comment, the Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority under the sitting government, Wisdom Kwaku Deku, (aka Yayra Koku) repeated the same statement Dr. Bawumia made in 2022 m, but no one has called Yayra Koku a liar.

Yayra Koku was widely reported by various online media platforms as saying, “The Ghana Card we hold today is recognised for travel within the ECOWAS subregion and is accepted at over 44,000 airports worldwide." He made the statement at an event to mark the 20th Anniversary of NIA in Accra.

Again, as a tech journalist, I went back to the technocrats about what Yayra Koku said, just to check if anything had changed from the time Dr. Bawumia made the statement and now. My understanding is that, till date the Ghana Card is at the e-MRTD level because, even though the writeable feature is now active, no bilateral and multilateral agreements are in place to allow visas to be written on it yet. So, practically nothing has changed between the time Dr. Bawumia made is statement and now. So, the basis for Yayra Koku's statement in 2026 is exactly the same as that of Dr. Bawumia's statement in 2022. We can still not use Ghana Card to travel out of Ghana.

But the folks who called Dr. Bawumia a serial, chronic and supersonic liar, and those who attacked some of us for reporting what the technocrats said about that claim, are today dead silent about what Yayra Koku said. So, the question is, was the statement a lie in 2022 because it was made by someone who had been tagged "the biggest liar in Ghana", or it is still a lie today even if it is coming from an official of the government formed by the party whose surrogates vehemently castigated Dr. Bawumia for the same statement in 2022?

What Yayra Koku told me

I had a conversation Yayra Koku on WhatsApp about this matter, and in his professional, truthful and very respectful nature he confirmed three things to me:

1. That the e-passport, e-ID and e-wallet features on the Ghana Card have been there since 2013 (That's nine clear years before Dr. Bawumia said ICAO systems now recognizes the e-passport feature in 44,000 airports.)
2. That he, Yayra Koku, having worked at the NIA in the past, personally educated the communications team of the NIA, that the Ghana Card has an e-passport.
3. That those who said Dr. Bawumia's comment was a lie are all "confused".

As stated earlier, the very same technocrats who confirmed what Dr. Bawumia said in 2022, have also confirmed that the statement still holds true today just like it held true in 2022.

Take note that Yayra Koku also said there is an e-wallet feature on the Ghana Card. This means if the right regulatory procedures are followed and the right licenses are acquired, Ghana Card can soon become a mobile money wallet, which can be used to receive money, send money and make payments. It may sound as wild as the e-passport comment, but it is a possibility.

I hope we will allow the technocrats to own the narrative on that in the national interest, because it is sickening to hear the political propagandists pretending to know what they are talking about when in fact they are painfully clueless and, to borrow Yayra Koku's word, "confused".

Here is where the elephant rests.