Kwaku Krobea Asante, Programmes Manager at the Independent Journalism Project under the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), has revealed shocking irregularities in the National Service Authority (NSA) payroll following an investigation by The Fourth Estate.
According to Asante, a single name appeared up to 226 times as a beneficiary on the NSA payroll.
The Fourth Estate first uncovered the ghost names scandal in November 2024 but was initially prevented from publishing its findings due to an ex-parte injunction secured by the NSA.
However, the court later lifted the injunction, allowing the report to be published. The investigation covered records from 2017 to 2023, including the 2024 national service year.
Speaking on The Point of View with Bernard Avle on Channel One TV, Asante described the irregularities as alarming, pointing out unusual entries in the payroll system, including individuals over 80 and 90 years old and fake index numbers.
“Ghost names in the sense that what the NSA tells us as the number of personnel is different from what they have in their data. Which data we believe eventually gets into the payroll and is paid. Now the government has come to confirm.
“Beyond that, we see how they do this, how they pack the ghost names, which is what the story is trying to say. How they use over-age people—80-year-olds and 90-year-olds—to put their data in there. How they create fake index numbers in the name of universities so that they can justify them.
“Funny names popping up, a single name could be repeated 226 times—such a person has completed the same university, read the same programme, the same year, and been deployed. A lot of odd happenings in the data, pointing to the fact that some people have intentionally done that.”
President Mahama has since directed an investigation into the suspected ghost names on the NSA payroll.
Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Spokesperson for the President and Minister of Government Communications stated that the suspected ghost names were detected after a headcount of active national service personnel.
Mr. Ofosu explained that the exercise was conducted at the request of the Minister for Finance, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, as part of efforts to clear outstanding allowance arrears dating back to August 2024.
He further disclosed that upon completion of the headcount, the Finance Ministry released GHS 226,019,224 to cover arrears for 98,145 legitimate service personnel.
“This figure is 81,885 less than the 180,030 names presented by the previous management of the Authority for allowance payment in 2024,” the statement from Mr. Ofosu added.
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