On April 9, 2023, I wrote and published one of my fact-based analytical telecom industry opinion pieces titled “Elephant in the room: Fraudulent SIM Registration is upon us again”. In the first two paragraphs of the concluding part of that article, subtitled “My Suggestions”, I wrote the following:
NCA must, as a matter of urgency create a universal short code for each Ghanaian phone user to be able to check what SIM cards/phone numbers are linked to their Ghana Card. The service on that short code should be robust enough to allow Ghanaians to be able to either report and or deactivate strange numbers linked to their cards.
Closely related to that, there should be a provision for an SMS to be sent to the primary number linked to any Ghana Card, once a new number is added to the owner’s pool. That way, he/she would know and blow the alarm if any strange number is linked to his or her card. This should help clear all the fraudulent SIMs linked to people’s cards. In fact, even for all existing numbers, the telcos should be mandated to send SMS to all the primary numbers and list all numbers linked to the same Ghana Card.
The basis for this suggestion was a real-life story of a young chief who tried to register a fourth SIM card on MTN only to find that seven AirtelTigo (AT Ghana) SIM cards had been linked to his Ghana Card without his consent, so his fourth MTN SIM could not be registered.
Read the chief’s full story on this link – Fraudulent SIM registration: The Chief’s full story.
Upon telling the chief’s story, several other people reached out to me with similar complaints. As I kept telling their stories, the National Communications Authority (NCA) then saw it fit to partially heed the first part of my suggestion and work with the telcos to introduce a short code – *402# on all networks, for people to check and know how many SIM cards are linked to their Ghana Cards. This process exposed thousands of fraudulent SIM registrations. But for some reason, the NCA failed to heed to the second suggestion, which was to prevent the fraud from happening in the first place.
My humble suggestion presented a golden opportunity to the NCA under the previous government to have put a major preventive measure in place to stem the ongoing massive fraudulent SIM registrations at the time. But as usual, the NCA under the watch of Ursula Owusu-Ekuful as minister, and Joe Anokye as the Director-General, was too pompous to listen to any advice. They adopted a know-it-all posture and rather chose to stick with the short code for people to check and find out if there are any fraudulent SIM cards linked to their Ghana Card after the fact.
In fact, some official from the NCA actually called me and said the introduction of the *402# short code to check how many SIM cards are linked to one Ghana Card, was something they were already working on before I wrote about it. In other words, my suggestion was not the trigger for that decision. They could not even admit that my suggestion helped, and that explains why they failed to heed to the second one, because that one was a fresh idea from me and they were too full of themselves to implement it and give me credit for it.
What the NCA rather elected to do was to point accusing fingers at the telco agents, who the NCA claimed, were the ones circumventing the process and registering people without performing the likeness and liveliness test. The liveliness test, in particular, required the actual owner of the Ghana Card to be physically present at the registration centre, for his face to be compared with the picture on the Ghana Card, and for his or her picture to be captured with the SIM Registration App. According to the NCA, the telco agents circumvented that process and managed to use other people’s Ghana Cards to register SIM cards for others. That was exactly what my common sense approach suggestion sought to prevent.
As a result of the NCA’s refusal to heed my advice and put that critical preventive measure in place, the Central SIM Register got breached and several fraudulent SIM cards found their way into the register. When we first exposed the breach of the Central SIM Register, The NCA denied it and claimed the register was still robust and intact. But recently, the NCA under this new government, carried out an audit of the Central SIM Register, using a sample of about 2.3 million registered SIMs. Of that number, almost 1.9 million (81%) were found to be legitimate, and the remaining 19% were found to be fraudulent. That was clear evidence that we were right when we reported that the Central SIM Register had been breached.
Even more striking was the fact that the current NCA discovered that none of the fingerprints in that Central SIM Register could be verified against the fingerprints in the database of the National Identification Authority (NIA), which is the critical database backing the Ghana Card, the only ID card used in the whole process. Again, that goes to show how the posture of Ursula Owusu-Ekuful completely trampled on national interest in favour of a private interest. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful failed to let the private sector contractor add what I suggested to the app they built for the registration. She rather sought to whip the NIA in line and make them subservient to the NCA, but the then NIA boss, Prof. Ken Attafuah stood on his grounds and stopped her in her tracks.
New Government, New NCA
Well, I am pleased to inform you that, finally, the new NCA, under this new government has seen wisdom in my humble 2023 suggestion and has introduced the preventive measure I proposed to ensure that any attempt by a fraudster to link a SIM to any Ghana Card will not go through without the consent of the Ghana Card owner. Under this regime, the Ghana Card owner will be notified through a one time password (OTP) for him or her to give approval first. The Ghana Card owner would be required to enter the OTP in a given field on the registration platform, to approve of the process. So, if he or she does not enter the OTP to give approval for the SIM to be linked to his card, the process will not continue, it will be flagged as fraudulent and be truncated.
For any government or institution serious about ID verification and authentication for any purpose, this is such a simple but very critical thing to do. I don’t know why the NCA under the auspices of Ursula Owusu-Ekuful would ignore such an important and common sensical suggestion, which would have solved at least 50% of the challenges which faced the process she led, and she rather chose to make life soft for the private sector service provider who built the app for the registration, which ended up creating long queues at various registration centres across the country. And yet, that same app was also the channel via which the Central SIM Register was breached.
How do I know that the NCA finally took my advice?
At a media engagement on Tuesday, March 17, 2026, the Director-General of the NCA, Rev. Ing. Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko made a detailed presentation on the forthcoming SIM Registration, during which he announced the decision to send an OTP to the primary number linked to every Ghana Card whenever another new number is being linked to that Ghana Card.
During the Q&A section, I expressed my joy over that decision and the Director General’s response was clear – he said to me openly that “when you spoke we heard you”. Clearly, he was referring to my April 9, 2023 article in which I made that exact suggestion.
Then the minister of Communications, Digital Technology and Innovations, Sam George also added that this is evidence that “aban papa aba and we listen” to wit, a good government has come and that this government is a listening government.
Nothing is more refreshing and rewarding than to find that you can also make a contribution to the development and progress of your country. More so, when you have government officials who don’t feel they know it all – so whatever suggestions anyone makes, is of no consequence to them – to them, anyone can have their say but they (the government officials) will always have their way. That cannot be the posture of any government, particularly not the one led by a president who said citizens should be participants and not spectators.
One More Suggestion on Airtime Loot
Speaking of critical suggestions for meaningful policy reforms that protects the public interest, I have on several occasions, also made suggestions to the NCA on how to stop airtime loot, but again, the NCA under Ursula Owusu-Ekuful completely ignored by suggestions. But I am trusting that this new NCA under this new government will listen and nib that fraud in the bud once and for all.
For several months in 2022, I single-handedly embarked on a campaign dubbed “#StopTheAirtimeLoot“. It was triggered by the rampant phenomenon of airtime vanishing from people’s phones without explanation. Apparently, the telcos and their value added service (VAS) partners had created some SMS-based paid services, which they sign customers on to secretly and took their airtime, usually without the consent of the customers.
In some of the cases which came to my attention, one phone number could have up to 20 of such hidden subscriptions, and each service could be charging about GHS1 a week from the customer’s airtime. Which means for every week that phone number will lose GHS20 to these hidden subscriptions without even knowing, and that was how people lost airtime and could not explain why. In fact there was one I found on my own late mother’s feature phone – it was called VUCLIPS Video and they charged her GHS2.02 every single day, until I found that they had stolen over GHS40 from her before I raised the alarm and got her a refund from MTN. The fact that they even signed a feature phone on to a video service, was evidence that they meant to steal my mum’s airtime and never to give her any such service.
My own MTN Turbonet SIM was also signed on to some Weather Report Service for GHS1 a day. The SIM was in the Turbonet so there was no way I could have signed on to that service by myself and there was no way I was going to enjoy the service. So they were just stealing my airtime for providing me with no value. When I caught them they pointed fingers at some VAS provider called IGNITIA. When I called IGNITIA, they told me that they only signed me on because MTN asked them to. Clearly there are thieves inside the telcos working with VAS players to steal from us.
My campaign therefore pointed to the short codes for detecting and deactivating these looting subscriptions on all the networks. They are *175# on MTN, *463# on Vodafone (Telecel) and *100# on AirtelTigo (AT Ghana). Check the picture below for details on the step by step process to detect and deactivate.
The campaign took me to several radio and TV stations, where I exposed the fraud and educated people on how to free themselves from it. The impact was massive. MTN Ghana actually saw a decline in their digital revenue for about two years running, because a lot of the airtime looting subscriptions were shutdown. Some VAS players reported losing revenue heavily and having to think of other creative ways to make money because the loot was over. NCA issued clear directives on protocols to follow to sign people on paid subscriptions.
I also found that the telcos blamed the loot on their VAS partners and claimed they were not party to the secret signing on, even though the law says only the telcos could sign on customers. So, if a telco elects to give access to VAS partners to sign on customers, then that telco is entirely to blame for the fraud. Moreover, a greater chunk of the stolen money went to the telcos anyway – between 60 – 80%, depending on which network.
The Real Challenge
But the real challenge is with how to detect whether a customer signed on by themselves or they were signed on remotely without their consent. The telcos conveniently claim that they never sign any customer on without their consent, and that the customers sign on to these subscriptions by themselves. So, on the back of my campaign, the NCA introduced a two step verification process for signing people on to such paid subscriptions. The steps are very simple and direct:
- The customer must first make the request for the paid service
- The service provider (telco) must send a confirmation message to the customer for the customer to approve by selecting “YES”
- Then upon the approval by the customer, the telcos can sign them own and start charging them
Whereas that directive is good, it still leaves room for the telcos and their VAS partners to steal people’s airtime and claim the customer actually signed on by themselves. Indeed, since the introduction of this new directive, several phone users have discovered fresh hidden subscriptions on their phones and when the respective telcos are confronted, their excuse is that the customer signed on by themselves, and it often ends there. In a few cases, the telco just gives the customer a paltry compensations. In a recent case the telcos only gave the customer GHS50 airtime.
So here is my suggestion to NCA
The NCA must have an independent way of finding out if the sign on actually fulfilled the two-step verification process. The way to do that is to ensure that both the telco and customer keeps digital receipts of the following:
- Evidence that the customer actually made the request for that paid service
- Evidence that upon receiving the request from the customer, the telco actually sent a confirmation message to the customer
- Evidence that the customer actually replied the confirmation message and said “YES” before they were signed on.
Without these receipts, there is no way the NCA will be able to independently determine whether the customer made any request, received confirmation message and actually gave consent before they were signed on. The telcos will always insist that the customer was the one who signed on by themselves and get away with it because the NCA would have nothing to hold the telco.
This is the reason why, even though the NCA keeps a very harsh sanction regime (a heavy fine of GHS60,000 per one offense) for such a fraud, not a single telco has been sanctioned yet, because the telcos always get away with the flimsy excuse that the customer signed on by themselves, even though they know that their staff are in connivance with VAS players to continue the loot, knowing very well that when they are caught there will be no evidence to hold them responsible.
The two-step verification directive will continue to be of no consequence without a system of keeping digital receipts that will serve as evidence in case a customer discovers an incident of airtime fraud. Again, the NCA cannot keep sitting in their offices and waiting for people to come and report. Individual reports trickling in once in a blue moon don’t constitute enough evidence to sue telcos. So, what the NCA should do is to engage consumer right advocates to recruit people in the various communities across the country to check for people. That massive evidence can then be gathered against telcos involved in this grand fraud. If one telco is sanctioned heavily for this fraud, it will be a deterrent to others and Ghanaians will be free from it.
Telcos are committing this fraud on millions of customers daily. If one proven offense will cost a telco GHS60,000, just multiply that by even just 100,000 and that comes to GHS600 million (US$55 million). That is huge money and should be deterrent enough.
I am trusting that this new NCA under the new “aban papa” will listen and take this consumer protection matter too seriously.
