Former Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has dismissed claims that she was not on talking terms with Professor Kenneth Agyemang Attafuah, former Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority (NIA), and that this caused limitations in the 2022–2023 SIM card registration exercise.
In a detailed statement released on Friday, March 20, 2026, the former Minister emphasised that she and Prof. Attafuah maintained regular professional communication throughout the registration process, and that the suggestion of personal discord is false.
She clarified that the only challenge encountered during the exercise was that the NIA did not allow the SIM registration system to connect directly to their biometric database during the second stage of verification.
Despite this limitation, she said the process successfully registered almost 30 million SIM cards, all linked to Ghana Cards, creating a comprehensive national database.
Ursula Owusu also highlighted that an audit conducted in 2025 showed over 80% of facial biometrics matched NIA records, reinforcing the effectiveness of the registration exercise. She insisted that personal disagreements played no part in any limitations.
“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,” she wrote.
She concluded by urging the current government to acknowledge the progress made during the previous exercise, rather than dismissing it for political gain.
Her response comes after President John Dramani Mahama suggested, during his Resetting Ghana tour in the Bono Region, that the previous SIM card registration was flawed due to disagreements between Ursula Owusu-Ekuful and Prof. Attafuah, which he said affected the process.
Click below to read her full statement
The plain truth about SIM Registration 2022-23
