NSS Scandal: Gov’t suspends national service digital system after The Fourth Estate exposé

The Ministry of Youth Development and Empowerment has announced the immediate suspension of the Central Management System (CMS) used for postings by the National Service Authority (NSA).

The directive follows emerging concerns over the integrity of the platform.

A statement issued on Wednesday June 18, 2025 by the sector’s minister, George Opare Addo indicated that the decision, which comes at the directive of the Office of the President, is “in the national interest” and intended to pave the way for a comprehensive technical and forensic review of the CMS platform.

The Ministry assured National Service Personnel and the general public that alternative systems are being explored to ensure smooth operations and transparent verification.

“The attention has been drawn to emerging concerns surrounding the digital infrastructure currently in use at the National Service Authority (NSA), specifically the Central Management System (CMS) for postings. Following the directive from the Office of the President, the use of the CMS has been suspended with immediate effect,” the statement stated.

This suspension comes in the wake of damning revelations by The Fourth Estate, whose months-long investigation uncovered that the CMS, including the much-vaunted ‘Metric App’ introduced by the NSA, had become a conduit for one of Ghana’s most brazen financial frauds.

In 2021, the former Director-General of the National Service Scheme, Osei Assibey Antwi, heralded the Metric App—a digital verification platform said to employ facial recognition and Ghana Card ID authentication—as a revolutionary tool that blocked over 14,000 fake names from the national service payroll.

“We had them on our list as potential service persons, but they ran away and could not register because the system raised red flags and weeded them out,” he boasted at the time.

Former Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, an ardent proponent of digitalisation, praised the scheme’s management for their innovation.

“If we replicate this in ten institutions, we are talking of saving the country almost a billion cedis,” he said, citing the Metric App’s supposed success as proof of the value of linking payroll systems to the Ghana Card.

But The Fourth Estate’s investigation revealed a shocking contradiction.

Rather than rooting out fraud, the very system hailed as foolproof enabled the enrollment and payment of thousands of ghost service personnel using fabricated data, duplicated photos, and fraudulent documents. In many cases, index numbers were faked, ID cards mismatched names and genders, and entire cohorts of fake “graduates” from non-existent programs were entered into the system and paid stipends.

According to the Attorney-General, the enrolment of ghost names under the CMS and Metric App system has cost the nation over GHC500 million. The platform’s failure has turned what was once described as a gold standard into what critics now call a digital crime scene.

Sulemana Braimah, Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), the parent organisation of The Fourth Estate, was among the first to publicly question the continued use of the compromised app.

“How on earth can the new leadership of the National Service Authority still be using the same Metric App that allowed for the enrollment of 80 and 90-year-olds for National Service? The same digital platform that allowed ordinary paper to be used as Ghana Card for enrolment… That allowed for one name to be repeated over 200 times?” Mr Braimah wrote on Facebook.

Mr Braimah criticised the current Director-General of the NSA, Felix Gyamfi, for defending the app despite overwhelming evidence of its failure. “Ghanaians cannot trust any so-called reforms with the same Metric App. JUST DROP THAT APP,” he stated emphatically.

The Ministry has not specified how long the review will take, nor has it clarified whether the Metric App has been permanently discontinued. It states, however, that “alternative systems and verification procedures are being reviewed”.