Errant supervisors arrested for leaking WASSCE questions
As Ghana struggles to unravel the faces behind the leakage of some exam papers in the ongoing WASSCE, Nigeria has arrested some of its supervisors who disclosed questions to candidates before the exams.
At least two people have been arrested in the Bauchi State and Port Harcourt.
The Head of Nigeria’s West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) National Office, Patrick Areghan, did not give names.
The Nigeria WAEC boss spoke to journalists during the monitoring of the exams which started on Monday in Nigeria.
With WAEC gaining notoriety for leakages of its examinations, many have asked for WAEC’s monopoly to be broken but Mr Areghan told students taking WASSCE to shun examination malpractice and rely on their ability.
“Students should not go about looking for anything they call expo. It is shameful, supervisors collecting question papers from WAEC and going somewhere to open the questions. Yesterday we caught one in Nasarawa.
“ They don’t know that we have a way of detecting them. In Bauchi, we caught another. We detected it from here. In Port Harcourt, a candidate did the same thing and was arrested,” The Punch quoted him as saying.
Rivers probes alleged cash for cheating in WASSCE
Meanwhile, the Rivers State Government said it is investigating allegations of malpractices WASSCE in the state.
The Commissioner for Education, Prof. Kaniye Ebeku, said a student in one of the schools in the state alleged that the principal collected money from candidates to allow them cheat.
Ebeku, in a text message, said, “All allegations of corrupt practices in the ongoing WASSCE will be investigated.
“Currently, we have no such report; bear in mind it is important to hear from the other party.”
The student had said, “Each of us was asked to pay N1,000 for Mathematics, another N1,000 for English Language and N500 for other subjects in order to cheat.”
But the principal, while speaking on a radio station on Wednesday, said, “I don’t know what the child is saying. I am going to bring out that child to say it before me that I collected N1,000 from them. I have never done it in my life and I have never thought of it too.”
WAEC, Ghana investigates
In Ghana, WAEC is investigating the leakage of Integrated Science, Mathematics and Chemistry papers as well as the publication of a confidential list of examiners.
While the Minority in Parliament is calling for the cancellation of the examination, the National Union of Ghana Students is opposing the idea.
They insist that the students cannot be blamed for WAEC’s inefficiencies.