(Nigerian woman jailed. Photo by BBC)
A 41-year-old Nigerian woman identified as Franca Wilson has been handed a six-month prison sentence in Ghana after being found guilty of attempting to obtain a Ghanaian passport through the use of forged nationality documents.
The Ghana Immigration Service confirmed the conviction in a report published by the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation on Thursday.
Earlier reports had indicated that Wilson, who works as a welder, entered a guilty plea before the Adabraka District Court in Accra on May 12, 2026.
The court sentenced her to six months imprisonment with hard labour on three separate counts, all of which are to run at the same time.
Wilson was first apprehended on April 24, 2026, at the Accra Passport Application Centre, after immigration officials noticed inconsistencies in the documents she submitted during the screening exercise.
She was subsequently transferred to the National Enforcement Department at the Ghana Immigration Service headquarters for a more thorough investigation.
Findings from the investigation established that Wilson is a Nigerian national from Rivers State, born to Nigerian parents.
Despite this, she allegedly presented a forged birth certificate claiming she was born in Somanya in Ghana’s Eastern Region and that her mother was Ghanaian.
During interrogation, authorities noted that she was unable to provide any credible or verifiable information to support her claim of having a Ghanaian parent a key detail in the fraudulent documents she had submitted with her passport application.