Exam fraud: How ‘miracle centres’ help students cheat

Weekly Trust came across some of these banners in the course of this assignment. One reads – “Register with us now and make at least six credits and 220 in JAMB.” The other says, “Score above 290 in JAMB; get university admission and nine credits all in one if you register with us.” Weekly Trust […]

Weekly Trust came across some of these banners in the course of this assignment. One reads – “Register with us now and make at least six credits and 220 in JAMB.” The other says, “Score above 290 in JAMB; get university admission and nine credits all in one if you register with us.” Weekly Trust called one of the phone numbers displayed in the banner and a respondent said, “Just come and register with us. We have a way of making sure that all our students pass.”

Benedict Ezimora, a former principal said, extra-mural lessons and tutorial centres exist principally to prepare candidates adequately for examinations, but recent developments have brought the mode of operations of some of these establishments into question. “JAMB had accused some of these establishments of aiding and abetting malpractices. The tutorial centres as ‘business’ aim to make maximum profit and this can only be realised with the registration of more candidates.

Candidates normally flock to centres where greater numbers of the candidates make great results, whether by hook or by crook. The candidates, therefore, are required to register with large sums of money with the promise of making good grades. One banner advertising a tutorial centre reads: “Register with us and success is guaranteed”. Another one says: “Score 300 and above in JAMB and make all your papers in one sitting”. Surprisingly, one candidate claims that no serious tutorial classes take place in some of these centres, as many candidates take it as an avenue for socialising with friends”.

For Ibrahim Sule, the problem is pervasive in both private and public schools. He told Weekly Trust that, “I remember during our time that cheating also took place. Toward our final year exams, final year students met and decided to contribute money to do everything possible to pass. It was coordinated by one of our teachers.

“The money was used for sacrifices that ensured that the external supervisor and even teachers in the school known to abhor malpractices don’t show up while it was going on during the exams. And it worked”.

Jimoh Adebisi (not real name) told Weekly Trust that there is a particular school in Kaduna where the proprietor uses soldiers to aid malpractices. “The proprietor of the school is a retired military man. During WAEC, he uses his influence to deploy military men to the school. The presence of the military normally gives the impression that cheating cannot take place while in reality they are there as camouflage, so that people don’t suspect what is going on.”

Specifically, the collapse of public schools, the success of the pioneers and the desire for quality education are responsible for the explosion of private schools. Right now, running private schools is a goldmine and businessmen, as against educationists, are cashing in on parents’ desire for good education for their children. Expectedly, the proprietors are smiling all the way to the bank while the larger society suffers. All manner of school fees, levies and lesson fees are charged; the teachers are poorly paid and in some cases, the schools are not conducive for learning.

The school fees vary from one school to another. For instance, a Senior Secondary School science student pays N50,800 per term at Essence School in Kaduna while his arts counterpart pays N47,100. At Clara School located at Hayin Banki, nursery and primary school pupils pay N12,100 and N14,700 respectively. On the other hand, Turaki International School charges N28,000 for both nursery and primary schools. Located on Rabah Road, Malali, GRA, Kaduna, Turaki is yet to have a secondary school.

In spite of complaints of high school fees, private schools are still in business as their enrolment figures keep rising and new schools keep springing up. However, given their high number, the proprietors devise all manner of ways to attract patronage. In this regard, some usually cut corners to achieve “academic excellence,” which they flaunt to woo customers.

Apart from a few reputable ones, most private schools stand accused of colluding with WAEC officials to get good results for their students. From leaking examination papers before hand to influencing invigilators and outright copying, the allegations are widespread.

In the run-up to SSS examinations, fraudulent proprietors do reach out to their point men in WAEC to get the question papers, but this is usually fraught with a lot of risks, a source told Weekly Trust. Usually, the more reliable option, he further said, is to compromise invigilators to look the other way during the exams. However, this strategy has its limitations, because it is more effective in multiple answers or objective papers where the correct answers will be read out to the candidates.

Similarly, he pointed out that the malpractice works better with mathematics and science-based subjects as the sums will be solved for the candidates to copy. With arts subjects, this strategy is a hard sell, especially for English and Literature.

The most foolproof malpractice, according to Weekly Trust findings, is “rigging from source” where some proprietors reach out to WAEC officials when results are being compiled. At that point, grades are said to be awarded on a cash-and-carry basis. In some cases, candidates are sometimes given grades in subjects that they didn’t even sit for.

Another form of malpractice, according to another source, is known as ECOMOG and there are special schools for that. In this scam, the schools are duly registered, but in actual fact, they are merely “WAEC examination centres.” Apart from one or two staff, the schools are usually empty, but during School Certificate Examinations, “students” will sit for the exam. Usually, such “students are workers who want to ‘make their paper’ in order to further their education.

“Under this system, the schools will help the candidates to find people who will ghost-write the papers for them. For this service, the schools charge hefty amount of money and the candidates come out with fantastic results. When Weekly Trust called on its Kaduna office, WAEC officials denied complicity in any exam fraud. Specifically, an official blamed parents, students and school administrators for abandoning good old hard work to attain excellence.

Hajiya Binta Jibril, woman proprietor of a private school in Kano, said they are aware that some of the proprietors are conniving with such exam bodies to get good result for their students. “Yes, some of the proprietors are conniving with the exam bodies to acquire at least five credits for their students, which include Maths and English,” she said.

According to her, schools that charge highly exorbitant prices are the perpetrators, adding that their opinion is that after paying such a huge amount of money, the students should at least get the least credit that would enable them to get admission into a tertiary institution.

She further added that it was not possible for any of them to know the schools that are doing that because, according to her, a criminal would never disclose his evil act, adding that the act was a source of concern to their own type of schools that were not doing it.

Dr. Said I. Mijinyawa is the National President for the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools. He told Weekly Trust, that the issue of exam malpractice is not just in private schools. He said it is a national phenomenon for which every Nigerian is culpable. “Exam malpractice is not just in the private schools, it is a national problem that affects the Federal Government, the state government, the schools, the examination bodies and indeed every stakeholder in education,” he said.

He disclosed that his association has never supported this act, and that even recently, the association had submitted a memo to the Federal Government reiterating its stand of not supporting the practice in any form. “Just recently, my Association submitted a memo to the Federal Government condemning exam malpractice and reiterating our resolve to fight it,” he said.

On measures taken to curb the menace, Mijinyawa said up till this moment, his association had never punished a school found involved in exam malpractice. He stated that he has requested from the Federal Government the mandate to punish any school caught, but he was denied such rights.

“We cannot punish a school because we don’t have the mandate and we have requested the Federal Government to give us that mandate, but it has refused,” he stated.

Explaining the measures taken by the Kano State government to curb exam malpractice, the Commissioner for Education, Alhaji Musa Salisu, said the issue of exam malpractice is a serious one because of the way it affects the credibility of Nigerians abroad. He stated that Nigerians going out of the country to study are subjected to other tests because of the questionability of their results.

He said the state government has embarked on rigorous exercise to stop the practice. Such measures taken, according to him, are to ensure a headcount of senior students in each school, so that only those on the census list would be allowed to sit for the exams and any school that decides to register too many students for the final exams would be penalised.

He added that they have closed some schools found involved in such practices. Another measure taken by the state government was to ensure that only teachers with integrity are allowed to invigilate in these schools. “We send good teachers to invigilate in these schools, teachers that will not compromise in any way,” he said. According to him, since the enforcement of these measures, the issue of exam malpractice has drastically reduced in Kano State.       

Mrs. Abike Shogunwa, a teacher at the State High School, Alimosho, Lagos State, denied that public school teachers aid students to perpetrate exam fraud. According to her, corrupt parents who want their children to gain admission into tertiary institutions at all cost aid malpractices during public exams.

She told our correspondent that she would not “totally agree that malpractice is still being perpetrated because there are some bad eggs amongst us – the teachers. But I can say without any fear of being contradicted that unlike in some places where students are supported to commit malpractices, public school teachers would not have the audacity to aid students to cheat during internal or external exams.”

The Alimosho State High School teacher was indirectly referring to private schools when she linked malpractices with ‘in some places’. This is true as it is a well-known fact among secondary school students in Lagos that writing WAEC or NECO in some private secondary schools is ‘cash for result’.  A former teacher at Jerare Summit School, Ogba, Lagos, told Weekly Trust that the school “charges the students sitting for either WAEC or NECO extra fees”, so that the teachers can look the other way while the students commit malpractice.

According to the former teacher who didn’t want to be named, some parents even threaten not to patronise the school again if the “teachers should dare fail their children”. The former teacher, who said he agreed that many privately-owned schools aid exam fraud, said they do this in collaboration with some public exam inspectors.

A student who has just passed out of a private school located around the Idimu area of Lagos, Victor Idiahin, said it is indeed true that apart from the normal fees charged by WAEC and NECO, they are usually made to pay some additional fees during the registrations for the two exams. He revealed that when writing the exams, he saw many people he did not know before as their colleagues; some of them old enough to be his elder brother were writing the exam in their schools. He said some of these “old colleagues” of his were the ones committing the fraud.

A parent, Mr Adekola Shuaib, said government should be blamed for allowing private schools to take over from public schools. He said those who had ruled or some of them who are still ruling the country intentionally spoilt public schools, so they could establish private schools for business. “To me, private schools are nothing other than business ventures; the owners who want to do anything to sustain the businesses. Let me tell you, if you set up a business, you would want to follow the dictates of your customers if you must stay in business; this is what is happening. A parent would say to the school proprietor, ‘Please, this girl is not bright, but allow her to go. After all, I would make her this or that in my company’…..”

Shuaib, whose children attend public schools, said, “Most parents detest government-owned schools because of the way public schools are run.” He said, “Many public school students would not resume in school until 9am; and many of them would be rough and tattered.”

The solution, he said, is for the government to be alive to its responsibilities and improve its supervision on private and public schools. He said, “Only the religious bodies should be allowed to run private schools.”

The solution to the problem is for the parents to go back to the good old days and begin to play their roles on their children—cross-checking The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has said privately-owned secondary schools in the country have been found to be mostly involved in malpractices in the annually-conducted May/June examination.

The registrar of WAEC, Alhaja Mulikat Bello, said most private school owners charge their students ‘comfort bill’ to help them to perpetrate malpractices in WAEC exams. She said in order to attract more patronages to them, private school owners always go out of their way to do a lot of illegal things to ensure that their students pass WAEC. According to her, most of the schools in urban centres instruct their teachers to solve WAEC questions for the students.

The WAEC registrar revealed that private secondary schools deceive Ministry of Education and WAEC officials to pass the certification test by going quickly to hire teachers and lab equipment whenever any inspection is coming up.

She ordered the Head of National Office of WAEC Nigeria to begin the re-inspection of all private schools in the bid to recertify them. Her words: “WAEC is not unaware that private schools perpetrate exam malpractices. The private secondary schools in addition to charging their students the WAEC fees also charge what they call comfort bill, which is the money the students pay to get good result. The teachers in these schools collaborate with the students to carry out exam fraud. They are the ones mostly involved in leakage of exam papers in the country.”

Alhaja Bello said Nigerians should stop blaming WAEC for the poor performance of students in its examination but should rather blame the government for not doing enough to save the education sector from near total collapse. She called on Nigerian parents to give more time to their children to complement the teachers’ efforts.

Also, the Head of National Office (HNO) of WAEC, Dr Iyi Uwadiae, said students who take public examinations do not read for them like “in the good old days” when those who took exams read both in the night and during the day. Now, home videos and musicals have taken over; students now watch movies and jump from party to party at the detriment of their studies.

“The parents, I think, should take the largest blame. Most parents have left all the duties on their children to the teachers who are poorly paid. Most parents these days fail to cross-check what their children do in schools. In the good old days, parents would not let their children sleep until they did their homework. They ask about what they did in school and monitor their children’s academic performances. The government too should motivate the teachers.”