Former Western North Regional Minister Joojo Rocky Obeng has shared a striking account of how Ghana’s national identification card proved decisive in solving a brutal murder case during his tenure, using the story to advocate for the continued expansion of the country’s national digital identification system.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, Obeng recounted that during his time as minister, a young woman was allegedly lured from the Ashanti Region into the Western North Region and killed. He said investigators initially had no way to identify the victim, whose body was found without immediate means of identification at the scene.
The breakthrough came during a wider search of the surrounding area, when a blood-stained cloth was discovered approximately 50 metres from the body. Inside the cloth was the victim’s Ghana Card.
“We got something from the cloth search. And it was the most important piece to help find who the headless body was and who the killers were too,” Obeng wrote, adding that the card “did all the speaking” for the victim.
According to his account, the identification enabled police to establish the victim’s identity, trace her background and ultimately link investigators to those allegedly responsible for her death, leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects.
Obeng served as Western North Regional Minister from March 2021 to January 2025, a period during which he also chaired the Regional Security Council, giving him direct oversight of law enforcement coordination in the region.
He framed the incident as evidence of the Ghana Card’s practical value beyond banking and public administration, connecting his account to recent statements by Interior Minister Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka on the role of national identification in security work. The minister has publicly championed the Ghana Card as a security instrument in the context of the ongoing security services recruitment exercise and broader public safety initiatives.
The Ghana Card, issued under Ghana’s national digital identification programme, has been promoted by successive governments as a foundational document for financial services, public sector administration and citizen verification. Obeng’s account adds a rarely heard dimension to that argument, grounding the policy case in a specific criminal investigation outcome.
