NSS Brouhaha: 72-Year-Old Kenyan Found On NSS Payroll

A meticulous investigation by The Fourth Estate has revealed alarming irregularities within the National Service Authority’s (NSA) NSS payroll, including the presence of ghost names and the fraudulent inclusion of a Kenyan citizen.

The investigation uncovered that a 72-year-old Kenyan national, identified as Kwame Donkor, was listed on the NSA payroll despite lacking proper identification. Instead of an ID card, only a photo was used for registration, a clear deviation from standard procedures.

Further investigation, involving a reverse image search, revealed that the photo attributed to Kwame Donkor actually belonged to Emmanuel Mutio, a Human Resource Manager working at a private IT company in Kenya.

Adding to the severity of the situation, the investigation also revealed that a single name appeared as a beneficiary on the NSA payroll up to 226 times, raising serious questions about the integrity of the system.

The Fourth Estate initially uncovered the ghost names scandal in November 2024 but faced an ex-parte injunction secured by the NSA, preventing the publication of the findings. The court subsequently lifted the injunction, allowing the report, which covered records from 2017 to 2023 (including the 2024 national service year), to be released.

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Kwaku Krobea Asante, Manager of the Independent Journalism Project under the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), described the irregularities as “frightening” during an interview on Channel One TV. He highlighted the presence of individuals over 80 or 90 years old and the use of fraudulent index numbers within the payroll system.

“Ghost names in the sense that what the NSA tells us as the number of personnel is different from what they have in their data. This data, we believe, eventually makes its way into the payroll and gets paid. Now, the government has confirmed this,” Asante stated.

He further elaborated, “Beyond that, we see how they do this—how they pack the payroll with ghost names, which is what the story is trying to expose. How they use over-age individuals, some as old as 80 or 90 years, to falsify records. How they create fake index numbers in the name of universities to justify these names.”

Names Repeated On Payroll

“Funny names keep appearing—a single name could be repeated 226 times. Such a person supposedly completed the same university, studied the same program, in the same year, and was deployed multiple times. A lot of oddities in the data suggest that these entries were deliberately manipulated.”

President Mahama has ordered a probe into the suspected ghost names on the NSA payroll following a headcount of active national service members, according to Felix Kwakye Ofosu, the president’s spokesperson and Minister of Government Communications.

Mr. Ofosu clarified that the headcount was conducted at the request of Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, Minister of Finance, as part of efforts to pay off unpaid allowance arrears dating back to August 2024.

Following the headcount, the Finance Ministry issued GHS 226,019,224 to settle arrears for 98,145 legitimate service personnel.

“This figure is 81,885 less than the 180,030 names presented by the previous management of the Authority for allowance payment in 2024,” the minister’s statement revealed.