Police in Abuja have paraded three secondary school teachers arrested recently for allegedly aiding and abating malpractices in West African Examinations Council, WAEC, in three states in the South.
The teachers, who were paraded before newsmen at the Force Headqarters, Abuja, by the Force Public Relations Officer, DCP Frank Mba, however, feigned ignorance of their offence, as according them, they merely snapped questions of examinations already written by students with their phones, saying they didn’t know such act constituted an offence. According to them, their actions were merely to later go through the questions and provide their answers for the WAEC candidates in the schools they are teaching so they can know questions not correctly answered in the examination.
The teachers who identified themselves as Godstime Onuoha, Uche Chukwuma and Ibuokanma Darlington, all staff of some secondary schools in Imo, Anambra and Rivers State, respectively, according to the Force Headqarters’ image maker, Frank Mba, were allegedly caught while in possession of WAEC question papers. Mba explained that the questions were carefully concealed on their mobile phones where they leaked to students through group WhatsApp platforms they established for the students, prior to any subjects they were to write. The teachers,he explained, took advantage of the role designated to them as supervisors in some examination centres to indulge in the acts.
He disclosed that their arrests were effected by the police detectives from the Cybercrime unit with active collaboration by officials of the examination’s body. According to him, the examination malpractice suspects will be charged to court for diligent prosecution whenever investigations on their matters were completed.
“I belong to the WhatsApp group of some of my students. I didn’t open the WhatsApp platform, they did and included my name in the platform as their teacher,”one of them told reporters. and the question paper on my phone was actually the one the students wrote the previous day which I usually teach them and know where they did well or not.
Speaking also during the parade of the suspects, Yusuf Ari, Director of WAEC in charge of Administration, regretted that the body had what he called the “biggest challenge.” According to him, several innovations were being emplaced with a view to making malpractices difficult in examinations. “We have developed a mechanism to detect leaked question papers sent to social media platforms and arrest those who are the main actors,”he disclosed at the event.
