Ghana’s status as the sub-region’s most affordable internet destination is drawing not only entrepreneurs and digital workers but also foreign cybercriminals, according to Communications Minister Samuel Nartey George, who says the Nigerian High Commissioner personally flagged cheap data pricing as a key pull factor driving the influx of Nigerian fraudsters into the country.
Speaking to journalists in Parliament on Sunday, March 1, Minister George said the concentration of Nigerian cybercrime suspects in Ghana is directly linked to two structural advantages the country offers: the lowest data bundle prices in West Africa and the relative stability of its electricity supply.
“That bundle — the Nigerian High Commissioner said to me it’s the reason why we are seeing a lot of Nigerian criminals coming into Ghana, because the internet is the cheapest in the sub-region when you use the GH₵399 bundle,” George said. “We have stable electricity.”
The remark comes with a sharp irony. The GH₵399 data bundle is the product of a policy intervention George himself championed. In July 2025, following direct negotiations between the Ministry and the chief executives of Ghana’s three major telecoms, MTN, AirtelTigo and Telecel, the bundle was restructured to deliver 214 gigabytes at GH₵399, making it significantly more generous than any comparable offer in the sub-region. The Minister had presented the deal at the time as a consumer protection victory.
The same policy that drew praise from millions of Ghanaian internet users is now, by the Minister’s own account, making the country structurally attractive to organised cybercrime syndicates seeking cheap, high-volume internet access to run romance scams, business email compromise, mobile money fraud and investment fraud.
Since December 2025, Ghanaian security agencies have arrested at least 242 Nigerian nationals across the Greater Accra Region in a series of intelligence-led operations. The crackdowns have targeted residential compounds in East Legon Hills, Afienya, Kwabenya, Weija, Dawhenya and Tuba, where suspects were found operating laptops and mobile phones inside gated apartments. A portion of those arrested were assessed by investigators as trafficking victims lured from Nigeria under false promises of employment rather than willing participants.
On February 16, 2026, Minister George and Nigerian High Commissioner Ambassador Ibok-Ete Ekwe Iban met formally in Accra to review the crackdowns and begin designing a bilateral enforcement framework to be jointly managed by both countries. Ambassador Iban acknowledged the scale of the problem and committed to measures aimed at addressing its root causes in Nigeria.
On Sunday, George also defended two other Ministry policies that drew initial public criticism: the DStv pricing intervention and an upcoming SIM card re-registration programme. He argued that Ghanaians who initially complained about the DStv changes now appreciate paying GH₵190 cedis to access the English Premier League, and predicted that the SIM registration rollout would similarly be valued once in place.
The Cyber Security Authority (CSA) has confirmed that Ghana recorded 2,008 cybercrime incidents in the first half of 2025 alone, exceeding the total for all of 2024, with financial losses of approximately GH₵19 million in the first nine months of that year.
