Minister for Communication, Digital Technology, and Innovation, Sam Nartey George, has justified the new SIM registration exercise, stressing that the initiative is primarily aimed at protecting consumers and preventing wrongful identification.
Addressing stakeholders on the government’s planned new SIM registration exercise, he said flaws in the current SIM database have exposed innocent individuals to serious risks, including being wrongly linked to criminal activities due to identity theft and data inaccuracies.
“The Minister for Interior, who doubles as the Minister for National Security, is breathing down my neck to give him a credible SIM register because there are times when law enforcement needs to identify a person, they ask us, and based on what we have today, and then they go and pick up a wrong person.
“The person’s Ghana card was cloned and used to register a SIM that was involved in a criminal activity. So, we have huge needs that have to be dealt with,” he added.
According to Sam George, the current registration drive is not driven by procurement considerations but by the need to ensure accuracy, security, and user protection.
He noted that the government is focused on building a reliable system that safeguards users while supporting law enforcement with credible data.
“At the base of this is not procurement. At the base of this are consumer protection and comfort, because the real battle in the last registration was procurement.
“Today, that is not what our interest is. Our interest is getting a system that works and is owned by the NCA and the NIA, so I am very confident that if we do this right, this will be our final,” he said.
The Minister added that the reforms are intended to restore public confidence while ensuring that consumers are protected from identity misuse and its consequences.
In a related development, the National Communications Authority (NCA) has disclosed that an audit of 2021-2023 SIM card registration data revealed zero fingerprint matches when cross-checked with the national identity database, raising concerns over the integrity of existing records.
According to the NCA, the findings form part of ongoing preparations toward a planned SIM card re-registration exercise aimed at improving data accuracy and security.
During the audit, the government made significant efforts to improve SIM subscription management by conducting a nationwide SIM registration exercise to link each SIM card to a verified form of identification.
Director-General of the NCA, Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko, made the revelation during a stakeholder engagement on Tuesday, March 17, 2026.
“In June 2025, we took a sample of about 2 million registrations and tested it against the NIA database. We found out that some SIM records could not be verified… As for the fingerprint, there was zero match,” he stated.
He explained that the discrepancies were due in part to differences in how biometric data was captured.
“Fundamentally, the NIA fingerprint was taken with contact, whereas what we did with the mobile registration was contactless,” he added.
The NCA further noted that, beyond fingerprint inconsistencies, several other issues were identified in the audit process.
“Some registrations contained incorrect identity information. Some biometrics could not be confirmed. There were also data inconsistencies observed between systems,” he said.
On facial recognition, the Authority reported relatively better results but still flagged gaps in verification.
“When it came to facial match, out of the 2.3 million registrations we attempted to validate, 81.1% matched… about 18.9% did not match. But there was no liveness check, so you still couldn’t tell if the person who presented the card was indeed him or her,” he explained.
The findings come despite nearly 40 million SIM cards having been registered nationwide, highlighting significant challenges in ensuring the credibility of subscriber data.
The NCA said that the planned re-registration exercise will address these shortcomings by strengthening verification processes and aligning SIM registration more closely with the National Identification Authority (NIA) database.
