The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Identification Authority (NIA), Wisdom Yayra Koku Deku, alleged that fingerprints collected during the SIM card re-registration exercise, were not authenticated.
In a twist of events, Mr. Koku accused the previous leadership of the NIA of doing shoddy works with the SIM card re-registration exercise.
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According to him, the data collected was only captured and stored within whatever systems were used for the exercise.
Yayra Koku, justifying his claims, referenced a letter written by the immediate past NIA boss, Prof. Kenneth Agyemang Attafuah, to the Telecoms Chamber in September 2021, which he said was never authenticated with the NIA’s system.
“The fingerprints collected during the SIM card registration exercise in 2022 were NEVER used to verify or authenticate SIM card owners against the National Identification Authority (NIA) system. They only took a picture of your fingerprints and saved them in whatever system they were using.
“Let me emphasize: captured fingerprints were not used to authenticate identities with any authoritative system. Prof Attafuah’s (Fmr NIA Boss) letter in September 2021 to the Telecoms chamber confirms this,” Mr. Koku’s post on Friday, April 11, 2025, stressed.
He underscored the purpose of biometric authentication and emphasized that it requires verifying individual identities, particularly through fingerprint scanning and facial recognition.
“It is important to understand that you cannot confirm the identity of an individual without them undergoing biometric authentication—which includes fingerprint scanning, facial recognition with liveliness checks, iris scanning…”
According to him, he hopes this alarm will help clarify the numerous questions raised by Ghanaians regarding the entire SIM card re-registration process.
