The National Identification Authority (NIA) insists it should not be blamed for notorious galamsey queen Aisha Huang’s possession of a Ghana card despite her repatriation from the country.
According to NIA’s Executive Secretary, Prof. Kenneth Attafuah, the Ghana Immigration Service did not return the non-citizen card issued to Aisha Huang [captured on NIA’s system as En Huang] as required by law when she was kicked out of Ghana in 2018.
He said this prevented NIA from flagging her name from its database.
“Ghana Immigration Service did not give Aisha Huang’s card to us [when she was repatriated]. There is no human in the national identity register called Aisha Huang. Nobody has ever registered called Aisha Huang. It may be someone’s nickname or pet name, but it is not a name that exists in our register.”
“The cards that Immigration gives to us are cards of persons who have gone through the judicial process and had been found to have offended the laws of the Republic of Ghana and are deserving of deportation or repatriation, as the case may be. The Ghana Immigration Service takes charge of their cards, facilitates their exits and then returns the card to the custody of NIA as required by law.”
He said, in this case, the person the NIA knows is En Huang, but they did not receive her ID card as required by law.
“Immigration has not given us En Huang’s card and I suspect that it was because on the occasion she had come to our attention, she had not gotten to the attention of the Immigration and judicial process. If it were so, I am confident that the Ghana Immigration Service would have done the needful,” Prof. Attafuah noted.
The NIA Executive Director said because this process was not carried through, when En Huang tried to renew her identification, there was no suspicion because “she was being a lawful foreigner resident in our country.”
Prof. Attafuah said this may be why she was found with an updated Ghana Card when she was re-arrested earlier in September.
It emerged that, Aisha Huang in the wake of her re-arrest over illegal mining activities in the country despite her deportation was found to be in possession of a Ghana Card bearing the name Huang En.
Explaining the viral Ghana card image suggesting that the suspected illegal miner has been given the Ghana card, the NIA earlier said that the particular registration was done in 2014 with the name Huang En and was renewed in 2016 and 2018 in Kumasi.
It said a Chinese national tried to register a new non-resident Ghana card in August 2022 with the name Ruixia Huang, but its system flagged it because the biometric details matched that of Huang En.
She is currently standing trial with four other Chinese nationals.
