Ghana Card’s E-Passport Claim Resurfaces as NIA Chief Echoes Bawumia’s Controversial 2022 Statement
The debate over whether Ghana’s national identity card can function as a travel document has resurfaced — this time with the current head of the National Identification Authority making the same claim that once earned former Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia widespread ridicule.
In February 2022, Bawumia, then widely branded as Ghana’s digitalization champion, declared that the Ghana Card was recognized in 44,000 airports worldwide as a valid form of identification for Ghanaians entering the country. The statement drew fierce criticism. Political opponents labelled him a “serial, chronic and supersonic liar.” Google searches for “who is the biggest liar in Ghana” returned his name.
More than four years later, Wisdom Kwaku Deku — known publicly as Yayra Koku, the Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority under the current government — made a strikingly similar claim at NIA’s 20th anniversary celebrations in Accra.
“The Ghana Card we hold today is recognised for travel within the ECOWAS subregion and is accepted at over 44,000 airports worldwide,” he said, according to multiple reports.
The political context has shifted, but the underlying technology has not, according to technocrats who worked on the card’s design. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they confirmed that the Ghana Card contains a chip compliant with International Civil Aviation Organization standards, registered through Ghana’s Public Key Infrastructure on the ICAO Public Key Directory.
In practical terms, this means ICAO-equipped machines at airports around the world can read and verify the chip. But there is a critical distinction between a document being machine-readable and being fully accepted for travel.
Most countries still require physical passport booklets, visas, stamps and immigration systems built around paper documents. The Ghana Card, even with its e-passport capabilities, cannot replace a conventional passport for outbound travel from Ghana or from outside the ECOWAS bloc. Within ECOWAS, it functions as a recognized travel document because member states have agreed to accept it.
The newer cards carry ICAO 2.0-compliant chips that support both reading and writing — meaning e-visas could theoretically be written to the card in future. But no bilateral or multilateral agreements currently exist to make that a reality.
Yayra Koku, in a conversation with journalist Samuel Dowuona, confirmed that the e-passport, e-ID and e-wallet features have been embedded in the Ghana Card since 2013 — nine years before Bawumia’s public statement. He said those who called Bawumia’s claim a lie were “confused.”
The re-emergence of the claim has exposed an uncomfortable gap in Ghana’s political discourse. The same assertion that was branded as falsehood in 2022 has been met with silence in 2026, raising questions about whether the criticism was ever about the substance of the claim or simply about who was making it.
For the technocrats who built the system, the answer has always been clear: the card’s chip is internationally recognized, but the political and legal infrastructure needed to turn that recognition into full travel document status remains incomplete.
Yayra Koku also revealed that the Ghana Card carries an e-wallet feature, suggesting that with proper licensing and regulation, the card could eventually function as a mobile money platform — a development that would further embed it in the daily lives of Ghanaians.
Image Source: GHANA BUSINESS NEWS
