Former Directors-General of the National Service Authority (NSA), Mustapha Ussif and Osei Assibey Antwi, have responded to allegations made by the Fourth Estate in a recent media publication.
The duo, according to the publication, engaged in irregularities related to enrollment, verification and payment processes within the NSA.
A February 18, 2025 statement issued by the former Directors, has, however, described the publication as being “laden with a misapprehension of the enrolment, verification, and payment processes of the National Service Authority, as well as selective omission of information, calculated to achieve contrived conclusions of imputing wrongdoing to former officers.”
According to the publication, there was a massive difference between the figures the Authority submitted to Parliament for budgetary allocations and what was available to the public.
The former officers clarified that the Fourth Estate relied solely on figures from the general posting done in September, omitting two cohorts of nursing trainees and one cohort of teacher trainees from the list.
“The NSA, in partnership with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Teachers Council, runs additional enrolment cycles for nurses and teachers, respectively. The former DGs argued that the shortfalls in figures were accounted for by these additional cycles.”
The publication also claimed the NSA payroll was flooded with “ghosts”, accounting for the discrepancies between the number of persons stated on the budget and what was verified at the postings.
The duo insisted that only persons who have been verified through the payroll system are paid through the GhiPPS System, a Bank of Ghana subsidiary.
The publication also claimed the NSA system was full of overaged individuals, foreign pictures, and wrong IDs. The former DGs in their statement countered this by explaining that initial data often contains errors, which are addressed during regional verification processes. Personnel with inconsistent information are categorized as banned or pending verification and do not draw from the payroll.
The former officers expressed shock that the Fourth Estate relied on entry data without verifying the actual number of personnel paid per year through GhiPPS. They argued that this reliance betrayed a malicious intent to publish a sensational story rather than diligently establish facts.
Throughout their tenure, Assibey and Ussif stated that they were committed to implementing robust enrolment and verification mechanisms to reduce fraudulent attempts. They urged journalists to be thorough in their work to avoid publishing misleading stories that malign individuals without basis.
The former officers welcomed President Mahama’s directive for an investigation, expressing confidence that the investigation would reveal the true state of affairs and counter the allegations made by the Fourth Estate.
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