I’ve wanted to write on this but I don’t think I may have the time but one thing I just want to draw everyone’s attention to is that there’s identity and there’s photo identity. Before the Advent of photo ID, there was identification. The SC got it wrong because photo ID only adds a photo to the ID of the bearer. After photo ID the world is now moving on to biometrics. These are human beings advancing and making use of available technology to add to what exists but does not make what already exists wrong. It only makes it better. A birth certificate is an ID. It is an identity document.
Now when we talk about id or identification, all that means is that some unique thing about you is required which differentiate you from another. A name is an identity. Your height is an identity, fingerprint is an identity, even the way you walk, or talk is part of your identity.
What needs to be clear is that identity is very relative. The kind of identity required of a person differs depending on the circumstances. E.g. you may have a student ID, a voter ID, a national ID, a driver’s license, professional Id, etc. All of these are different forms of identification of a person. So the kind of information required of the person is what the person is required to make available. So identity is not all-embracing or all in one or a one size fits all.
If you go to the bank to transact business they would require a national ID. You may have a professional Id or a student ID but you can’t use it. Why? Because even though a student ID is also an ID that is not what the bank requires. You can’t show your voter ID to the police officer when he needs your driver’s license even though your voter card is also an ID of yours. So in essence an ID depends entirely on the circumstances. So a birth certificate is an ID that provides required information about you as a person in terms of when you were born, where you were born, parents’ names, their nationality, etc.
Ghana is more than 60 years old to trap ourselves with and argue over such basic knowledge.
This whole ID and birth certificate thing should never have come up.
Source: Lawyer Isaac M. Larbi
