Gifty Oware-Mensah Trial: Investigator Says 63,673 Ghost Names Got NSA Pay

A police investigator has told the Accra High Court that an analysis of the National Service Authority (NSA) database found 63,673 faceless names that had been paid monthly allowances without doing any work.

Detective Sergeant Collins Woode was giving evidence as the fourth prosecution witness in the trial of Gifty Oware-Mensah, a former Deputy Executive Director of the NSA, as first reported by Graphic Online.

Ms Oware-Mensah faces charges of stealing, wilfully causing financial loss to the state, using public office for profit and money laundering. The charges relate to an alleged loss to the state of more than GH¢38 million.

Testifying on 11 November 2026, Sergeant Woode said the names were found on a banned list within the authority's system, even though allowances had been paid against them.

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"Before then, we had already done an analysis of the whole Central Management System and we found out that 63,673 faceless names were found in the Central Management System to have received allowances for no work done," he told the court.

He described how prospective service personnel register on the system with their dates of birth, national identification cards and photographs, then go through biometric checks at regional level. According to the witness, anyone whose photograph and date of birth did not match was flagged and placed on the banned list, which remained in the system.

Personnel who passed verification, he said, had to download acceptance letters, secure endorsement from their user agencies and return to the regional office to receive access codes. Monthly evaluations were also required before allowances could be paid.

The investigator told the court that payments on the system, meant for service personnel, were also going to companies. He named Marine Ventures, Brainwaves Enterprise and ADB Hire Purchase among those identified.

He said discussions with officials of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), including its Head of Consumer Banking, Serbeh Yeboah, showed that ADB Hire Purchase was not itself a vendor. Instead, he said, the real vendor was Blocks of Life Consult, a company the accused allegedly introduced to the bank.

According to the witness, the company was presented to ADB as a vendor in good standing with the NSA that needed financing to buy items for about 10,000 service personnel. Repayment was to come from deductions taken directly from the personnel's allowances.

He said an e-zwich account was opened for ADB to receive the repayments, using lists of personnel the accused allegedly submitted to the bank. That, he explained, was why ADB's name, rather than Blocks of Life Consult's, appeared on the system.

A list obtained from ADB contained 9,934 names allegedly submitted by the accused for the loan and its repayment across the 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 service periods. Comparing it with the 63,673 alleged ghost names, investigators found 7,324 names on both lists, while 2,610 were not on the ghost list, the witness said.

As an example, he cited a name, James Waja, which he said appeared on lists for both periods. The 2023/2024 record, he said, showed no place of posting and no allowance amount.

The witness said the loan arrangement showed a total deduction of GH¢7,150 over 11 months, or GH¢650 a month. He said the difference between the GH¢715 allowance figure and the GH¢650 deduction went to Marine Ventures, which held an NSA contract to supply clothing to service personnel.

Cross-examination was adjourned to 12 November 2026.