Six individuals have been convicted by the High Court in Tamale for their roles in a payroll corruption scheme involving ghost names and fraudulent salary payments within the Ghana Education Service.
The convicted persons include school administrators, payroll officers, and accountants who facilitated the illegal validation and reactivation of salaries for a teacher who had vacated his post.
Their actions led to the wrongful payment of over GHS 86,000, all of which has now been recovered—bringing the total amount retrieved to GHS 106,319.64.
The convictions followed guilty pleas entered under the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s (OSP) plea bargaining framework, leading to full restitution and reparation to the State.
The Office is also pursuing several other suspects as part of a broader, ongoing investigation.
The OSP currently has six other criminal trials ongoing in Accra, Tamale, and Kumasi as it intensifies efforts to charge more individuals under investigation and safeguard public funds.
The convicts include Osman Issahaku, the current Headmaster of Balogu JHS, Abdulai Abubakar Sadic, the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database (IPPD) Coordinator for the Yendi Municipality and Sammy Suuk, the Schools Improvement Support Officer (SISO) for the Yendi North Circuit.
The rest are Tahidu Yakubu, a former teacher at Balogu M/A Junior High School (Balogu JHS) in Yendi, Mohammed Yusif Jay, former Headmaster of Balogu JHS and Stafford Korletey Azudey-Barres, an Assistant Chief Account Technician at the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department in Accra.
