She didn’t carry a gun. She didn’t need to. Her weapon was access, a login, a password, and the trust of a nation.
Gifty Oware Mensah once sat at the heart of the National Service Authority as Deputy Executive Director, helping young graduates take their first steps into the world of work. Beside her was her boss, Osei Assibey Antwi, a man known more for his political rise than for his managerial discipline. Together, prosecutors say, they turned a public service system into a factory of ghosts.

Between February 2022 and March 2024, the National Service “marketplace,” a digital platform meant to help service personnel access goods and hire-purchase loans, became the perfect crime scene. Investigators uncovered 9,934 fake names, identities that breathed only on paper but bled real money. On the strength of those ghosts, the Agricultural Development Bank released about GH¢31 million. The purpose was noble: to support service personnel. The result was cynical; the goods never came, but the money did.

According to the Attorney General’s charge sheet, filed and signed by Dr. Dominic Ayine, the offenses include stealing, causing financial loss, using public office for profit, and money laundering. The document traces GH¢31,502,091.40 to Blocks of Life Consult, a company Gifty allegedly controlled. The irony of that name is chilling. Blocks of Life built on the bones of ghosts. Another GH¢22.9 million reportedly went to Amaecom Global, where she was a director. The rest was moved through other companies, with Ghana charged GH¢6.9 million in interest, as though defrauding the Republic came with a service fee.

But that was only one wing of the operation.
At the top of the institution, Executive Director Osei Assibey Antwi presided over what prosecutors describe as a larger, institutionalized payroll heist. He is accused of authorizing payments amounting to more than GH¢500 million to nonexistent service personnel. Auditors found that 60,000 ghost names were paid allowances. The investigation also revealed that GH¢8,256,000 was directly deposited into an e-zwich account registered in his own name, even as he was bizarrely listed as a volunteer on the same scheme he was paid to supervise.

In total, the two cases, the marketplace scam and the ghost payroll, have cost the Republic more than GH¢653 million in real losses and unpaid hope. These were not errors. They were engineered.

This is not just about two people. It is about how power and trust can merge into theft. It is about how weak controls, lazy audits, and political patronage create room for public officers to act like private landlords of state funds. How did one man and one woman gain so much control over a national scheme without detection? Where were the auditors, the financial controllers, and the institutional conscience?

We often call these scandals shocking. They’re not. They are symptoms of a nation whose systems now breathe corruption like oxygen. Our institutions have become graveyards of trust. Every few years, we dig up another scandal and act surprised. Then the same script follows: reports ignored, audits delayed, and prosecutions stretched until outrage dies. Silence has become state policy.

Meanwhile, real service personnel wake before dawn to catch a trotro, borrow to eat, and pray their allowances aren’t delayed again. They are the true servants of the Republic, while ghosts who never lived collected their sweat in bulk payments.

I often wonder if Gifty Oware Mensah and Osei Assibey Antwi sleep well. Maybe they do. Maybe they believe they were smart, not corrupt. Because in Ghana’s bureaucracy, the ghosts never die; they migrate. From NSA to GES, GHS, NSS, NHIS, SSNIT, and MMDAs. From payroll to procurement. We forget. They rebrand. We forgive. They reapply.

This must not become another headline that fades into dust. The Republic must recover what was lost and fix what failed. Biometric verification must be mandatory for all public disbursements. Audit reports must be made public. Bank verifications must include real-time data checks, not spreadsheets alone.

If Ghana fails to act, the next heist is already in motion. The names will change. The numbers will grow. And the ghosts will march again, silent, digital, and deadly.
Because the ghosts have learnt accounting, and the living have learnt silence