Former Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has strongly rebutted comments made by President John Mahama regarding the 2022–2023 SIM registration exercise, insisting that the process was credible, structured, and legally compliant.
In a statement issued on March 20, 2026, Mrs. Owusu-Ekuful said she had refrained from commenting since leaving office but felt compelled to set the record straight after President Mahama repeated what she described as “falsehoods” during his Bono Region tour.
She explained that the exercise was necessary because the previous SIM registration conducted in 2010–2011 lacked proper validation and could not reliably confirm users’ identities.
“That earlier process did not have any proper validation system due to the lack of any mass identification document… Honestly, who could confidently say whether those manual verifications were right or wrong?” she questioned.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful stressed that the 2022–2023 registration was tied to the Ghana Card, incorporating a two-stage system: verification of Ghana Card details with the National Identification Authority (NIA) and a biometric data capture stage involving facial and fingerprint recognition.
She noted that every active SIM card in Ghana today is linked to a Ghana Card, describing it as “an incontrovertible fact.”
Addressing claims of institutional friction, the former Minister clarified that any challenges were technical, not personal, and highlighted that over 80 per cent of facial biometrics captured matched NIA data in a 2025 audit, demonstrating the exercise’s effectiveness.
She criticised attempts to dismiss the process as meaningless, pointing out that even the current government’s approach mirrors the methods she and her team had already implemented.
The former minister stated that the exercise had also encouraged many Ghanaians to obtain their Ghana Cards, strengthened transparency, and created a reliable SIM registry hosted securely by the National Electronic Transactions Authority (NITA).
Mr Owusu-Ekuful added that the government should build on prior progress rather than erase it for political advantage, urging honesty, consistency, and recognition of achievements.
“The previous exercise was not perfect, but it created a foundation… The Ghanaian people deserve honesty. They deserve consistency,” she stated.
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Source: www.myjoyonline.com
