By Mabinty Kamara
The credibility of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) in Sierra Leone is at stake following incessant allegations of examination malpractices, leading to the seizure of hundreds of results.
The examination body was also under pressure by civil society organizations to explain massive failures in successive examinations.
A major demonstration planned for Monday 29 February,by a coalition of organizations championing the call for action against the regional examinations body, was banned by the police over the weekend in fear that it might lead to violent eruptions.
The Sierra Leone Police had given a provisional approval for the protests. It suddenly reversed it and, according to its statement to the media, they had intelligence that indicated the demonstration could have posed a threat to peace.
But the statement signed by Inspector General Francis Alieu Munu also said a fresh agreement was possible if the organizers sought it.
The Fontricia Children Foundation (FCF), which is coordinating the campaign, has vowed to push on, with or without a police order, to conduct a peaceful demonstration until WAEC does the right thing. It said the demonstration was just one of several actions planned.
The organization has since lodged a complaint with the Rights to Access Information (RAI) in its bid to get WAEC officials to release information it says it needs to enhance their campings for students whose results have not been released.
Abdul Fonti Kabbia, Executive Director of the Fontricia Children Foundation, told Politico that they also planned to go to court if need be to get WAEC to cooperate. He said he had also filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Commission and was scheduled to make a presentation to the anti-graft agency on Wednesday 2 March.
About 1000 results of students who sat to the 2014/2015 WASSCE exams are reported to have been seized by the authorities.
The WAEC office in Freetown turned down repeated requests for an interview with Politico. But its head, PatrickNdullu, has been quoted previously as saying that the Council did not seize results andthat they only made recommendations to the ministry of education which effected the action.
But the campaigners say while they were not denying that there were problems, they wanted WAEC to provide evidence of allegations of malpractice against the students whose results were being held. They are also arguing that malpractice in examination cannot be possible without the involvement of officials and they want the authorities to take action against exams monitors provided by WAEC.
“Examination malpractice has seriously downgraded our educational standards that people find it hard to even congratulate those who make it through the genuine way because of the negative perception that people have about the system,” Kabbia said.
WAEC’s membership comprises all the English speaking West African countries, with the exception of Liberia. This March the Council marks its 64 years anniversary.
Examination malpractice is actually not isolated to Sierra Leone. It has been on the media in all the other member countries of the Council – Nigeria, Ghana, and Gambia.
Exams malpractice has eaten so deep into the fabric of the country’s education system that last week the University of Sierra Leone (USL) hosted a conference aimed at addressing it.
Students, in connivance with rouge WAEC employees and other independent teachers, involve in all forms of activities including awarding of grades for candidates who never even sit in exams hall. Some exams monitors take the exams on behalf of candidates in exchange for all sorts of favours, sources say.
For universities, high school graduates present fake certificates or certificates acquired by cheating to gain admission and in the course of their studies it becomes difficult to cope because of the poor background.
“No one can deny the fact that examination malpractice has not already become a cancer that is slowly eating all that we hold dear in education. A cancer that is reflective of a larger malaise which, if left unchecked, will bring this nation to its knees and ensure a state of chaos that neither the decade long civil war nor the Ebola epidemic was able to do,” Dr Minkailu Bah, Minister of Education, told the Exams Malpractice conference hosted at the Bank of Sierra Leone Complex in Kingtom late last month.
According to official sources, out of 24, 000 who sat to the 2015 WASSCE, only about 3000 got pass mark to enter university.
Through what seems like a business, WAEC’s policy has seen students taking exams repeatedly. This has led to some, like young IshaKalokoh, herself a victim of the current situation, accusing the exams body of “deliberately failing” students so that they will get more candidates for private exams.
Sorie Bangura, 30, sat to the exam for the second time. He needs two more subjects with credits to complete his university entry requirements.
“I feel bad at the action of WAEC for withholding the results,” the young man told Politico.
But the campaigner believes the examination body needs to be investigated first, as a first step to addressing all these issues. He said since they conducted and supervised all public examinations in the country, the Council should be held responsible for any examination malpractice.
WAEC has been persistently withholding WASSCE results almost every year in the “guise of examination malpractice” without evidence of such malpractice, he said.
(C) Politico 02/03/16
