Rebuttal Statement on SIM Registration Falsehoods
I have deliberately refrained from commenting on events in the communications sector since I left office a little over a year ago but am compelled to set the records straight when the President of the Republic himself repeats falsehoods. I have heard the comments made by President Mahama in the Bono Region on the SIM registration exercise, and I must say that a number of the comments he made are far from the truth.
Let us be clear from the beginning: the 2022–2023 SIM registration exercise did not come out of nowhere. It became necessary because the old SIM registration exercise done in 2010–2011 was not effective. That earlier process did not have any proper validation system due to the lack of any mass identification document. Towards the end of that exercise, some attempts were made to verify some registrations through the Passport Office, but that process was manual and very few Ghanaians had passports anyway. Honestly, who could confidently say whether those manual verifications were right or wrong? That is not the kind of credible system a country should rely on.
That is why we introduced a more structured and legally compliant process tied to the Ghana Card. The idea was simple: if SIM cards are being used in Ghana, then they must be linked to a proper national identity system as required by law. That was the whole point.
The process itself had two stages. First, people entered their Ghana Card details through a shortcode. Those details were checked with the National Identification Authority to confirm that the information was correct. After that, the individual moved to the second stage, which involved data capture and biometric registration, including facial and fingerprint capture.
EVERY ACTIVE SIM CARD BEING USED TODAY ON ANY MOBILE NETWORK IS THEREFORE LINKED TO A GHANA CARD, AND THAT IS AN INCONTROVERTIBLE FACT.
Now, a lot has been said to create the impression that the problems with the exercise were because of personal issues or bad blood between institutions. That is simply not true. I have known Professor Attafuah for many years and at no point in time did we ever stop speaking to each other either personally or professionally. We may have had disagreements but I am too professional to allow differences of opinion to affect my work in any way.
The only issue was that the National Identification Authority did not allow the SIM registration system to connect to their database for biometric verification at that second stage. That was the challenge. This however, did not prevent us from compiling a comprehensive database of all activated SIMs in Ghana and I thank all well-meaning Ghanaians once again for their cooperation which ensured that the mass registration exercise was successfully completed with the registration of almost 30 million SIM cards. That SIM Registry database exists and is hosted securely by the national Electronic Transactions Regulator, NITA, in the National Data Centre.
And yet, despite that limitation, what do we know today? We know that when an audit was conducted in 2025, more than 80% of the facial biometrics captured matched with the data in the NIA database. That is important. That means the process was not some useless or empty exercise as they are now desperately trying to suggest. In fact, it shows that the major part of the work has already been done.
All that is left now is for the less than 20% to be biometrically verified in what can only be termed stage 3 of what we started. That is all.
So the question is simple: if they say the previous exercise had no value or no data, then where did the 80% verification result come from? What data did they use for that audit? You cannot say on one hand that there was no data, and then on the other hand use audit outcomes based on that same exercise. That is contradictory. That is dishonest.
It is also important for Ghanaians to know that the SIM registration exercise was not a fixed process that never changed. It kept improving. We learned lessons as we went along, and based on those lessons, the process evolved. By the time we were leaving office, there was already a self-registration app in place for people to register themselves. So when this government comes and presents the same approach as though it is something brand new, that is simply not true.
What are they using now? A shortcode. An app. A smartphone-based process. Biometric registration. But are these not the same things we had already introduced? So what exactly is new here?
We were proactive and made efforts to improve convenience and access through constant monitoring and evaluation of the process. There were measures put in place to make the system easier for consumers, as we responded to the real challenges people faced during the process. This was not a government sitting down and doing nothing. It was work in progress, and it was progressing smoothly.
Another success of that exercise, which cannot be ignored, is that it pushed many Ghanaians to go and get their Ghana Cards. That alone was a major national gain. The exercise helped strengthen the national identification system in a very practical way. We also put in place shortcodes for people to check the SIM cards linked to their Ghana Cards. That improved transparency and gave consumers a way to monitor what was tied to their identity.
We all know which people actively discouraged people from acquiring the Ghana Card claiming they had boycotted the registration process. We also know those who tried to sabotage the SIM registration process, proudly tagging themselves as ‘the stubborn academy’. Maybe that is why there is this concerted effort to denigrate a largely successful exercise.
And let us not pretend otherwise: one of the reasons the exercise moved people to act was because deadlines were set. Yes, deadlines were extended where necessary, but the deadlines created urgency. They pushed people to register. So now the question for this current government is: will they be bold enough to say there will be no deadlines? Because if they also introduce deadlines and extensions, then are they not doing exactly what they criticized?
That is why we are saying this government should stop pretending that it is starting afresh or doing anything new. It should stop acting as though nothing meaningful was done before now. Governance is a continuum. If something has been started and useful progress has been made, the duty of the next government is to build on it, improve it, and be honest about it.
You cannot lie about a process, dismiss it in public, and then turn around and do the same thing again. If the previous method was so wrong, why are you repeating the same methodology, the same structure, and the same approach?
You cannot condemn a process in the morning, copy it in the afternoon, and come back in the evening to claim you have invented something new.
We believe that where praise is due, praise must be given. The previous exercise was not perfect, but it created a foundation. It introduced structure, verification, accountability, and a path toward a credible SIM registration regime. That fact can never be denied.
The Ghanaian people deserve honesty. They deserve consistency. And they deserve leaders who will build on progress made by their predecessors instead of erasing it and lying about it for cheap politics.
Wo nyi m’ayɛ a, mɛnsɛi me din!!
Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful
Former Minister for Communications and Digitalisation
20/03/2026