The National Service Authority (NSA) has recorded its lowest number of service personnel in three years for the 2025/2026 service year, with only 132,393 graduates enlisted.
This drastic decline comes amidst the Authority’s aggressive crackdown on “ghost names” and inflated figures that have previously plagued the system.
The current enrollment represents a staggering 26% drop compared to the average over the past three years, and an even more significant 36% reduction when measured against the 2022/2023 service year.
In previous years, the NSA registered 171,703 personnel in 2024/2025, 176,359 in 2023/2024, and 144,773 in 2022/2023.
The NSA attributes this sharp decline not to a reduction in eligible graduates, but to a strengthened validation system and stricter vetting measures.
These enhanced controls, implemented to boost data integrity and transparency, have successfully eliminated thousands of fraudulent entries that inflated past figures.
The Authority has released PIN codes for the 132,393 prospective service personnel from 100 accredited institutions, enabling them to register for the mandatory national service.
However, the NSA revealed that 3,597 graduates from 22 tertiary institutions were disqualified from the program.
These institutions, initially submitting 135,990 names, were found to be unaccredited and unrecognized by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), leading to the rejection of their students’ applications.
This significant reduction signals the NSA’s commitment to rooting out corruption and ensuring the integrity of the national service scheme.