Ghanaians are heading for another round of SIM card registration, and the country is responding with the same weary sigh reserved for power cuts, potholes after a fresh asphalt job, and football tournaments where we promise ourselves we won’t get our hopes up again.
This will be roughly the third major attempt in about 15 years — though depending on who you ask, it could be the fourth, the fifth, or “I’ve lost count; please don’t stress me.”
The Ministry of Communications insists the new exercise will “clean the system”, “enhance security”, and “improve digital services”. Ghanaians, however, are wondering why their phone numbers seem to require more paperwork than a land title. Many say they have registered so many times that the telecom operators should be able to identify them by voice, retina scan or the way they shout “network no dey” during mobile money transactions.
The first registration was meant to solve everything. The second was supposed to fix what the first didn’t. This third one apparently aims to solve whatever the second messed up while trying to fix the first.
There was even a period when people thought linking their Ghana Card to their SIM would end all future registrations. It didn’t. It seems the only thing permanently linked is our collective frustration.
Queue veterans (a respected demographic in Ghana) say they are preparing emotionally. “I’ve done this thing so many times I could fill the forms blindfolded,” said a man at Circle, before clarifying that he would prefer not to.
Government says the updated registration is needed because “technology has evolved”. This is true. What is also true is that people have evolved too — mostly into citizens who can spot the beginning of a fresh bureaucratic circle long before the press conference ends.
Officials promise that “this will be the last major registration”. Ghanaians have heard that before, right alongside “this will be the last tariff increase” and “the Black Stars are rebuilding”.
Many are simply pleading: let us use our SIM cards in peace.
After all, phone numbers are supposed to be permanent. They are not supposed to feel like seasonal licences that expire whenever a ministry gets a new director or a consultant produces a new digital roadmap.
Some Ghanaians say they now expect routine SIM registrations the way they expect routine traffic on the Tema Motorway: unavoidable and best approached with snacks and patience. Others have begun saving old registration slips and photocopies of Ghana Cards in labelled envelopes titled “Next Registration, Whenever It Comes”.
At this rate, anyone born today may complete at least five different SIM registration cycles before senior high school. Some parents are already joking that they might as well register their newborns’ SIM cards alongside their birth certificates, “just to stay ahead of the system”.
Still, Ghanaians will show up (because we always do) queuing with resignation, humour, and the faint hope that maybe this time, the system will finally work.
But no one is betting their airtime on it.
