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Journalist with Citi TV and Citi FM Umaru Sanda Amadu has bemoaned the refusal of the Ghana Passport Office to issue passports to Fulani people on the basis that they are of the Fulani ethnicity and therefore unqualified for Ghanaian passports.
He described the denial of passports to persons of his ethnic extraction as ethnocentric, backward and unlawful.
Mr Umaru Sanda Amadu, a prominent Fulani himself who recently received a national award for his meritorious service to Ghana, lambasted officials of the Passport Office for not only refusing to issue passports to Fulani people but seizing their National Identity Cards( Ghana Cards) and declaring them non-Ghanaians for merely being Fulani.
He intimated that these Fulani people being denied Ghana passports are qualified by law to be issued passports since they are Ghanaian citizens.
“Dear officials of Ghana Passport Office, Stop denying Fulani people passports because of their ethnicity. It is not only ethnocentric and backward, it is also unlawful.
Citizenship and possession of a Ghanaian passport is governed by law, and not the looks of the applicant or their ethnicity.
I have received so many calls from Fulani people saying you have seized their Ghana cards and refused to process their passport applications, telling them Fulani people aren’t Ghanaians. Who taught you that?” He quizzed in a rant on social media.
Ghanaian citizenship is not determined solely by ethnicity. Article 6 of the 1992 Constitution provides for instance that:
“Every person who, on the coming into force of this Constitution, is a citizen of Ghana by law shall continue to be a citizen of Ghana.
(2) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, a person born in or outside Ghana after the coming into force of this Constitution, shall become a citizen of Ghana at the date of his birth if either of his parents or grandparents is or was a citizen of Ghana.
(3) A child of not more than seven years of age found in Ghana whose parents are not know shall be presumed to be a citizen of Ghana by birth.
(4) A child of not more than sixteen years of age neither of whose parents is a citizen of Ghana who is adopted by a citizen of Ghana shall, be virtue of the adoption, be a citizen of Ghana.”
Notwithstanding clear provisions of law that merely being Fulani doesn’t disqualify one from being a Ghanaian citizen, the Fulani in Ghana continue to suffer discrimination and stigmatization due to their ethnicity.
