By MOLLY KILETE, Abuja

The Police force headquarters in Abuja Friday paraded 17 teachers for allegedly involving in malpractices in the August/September West African Examination Council (WAEC) examinations across the country.

The suspects among them school principals were arrested at Bauch, Kano, Nassarawa and Rivers States.

Parading the suspects before newsmen, Mba, said the examination body had began a massive collaboration and partnership with the Nigeria Police Force that is designed to strengthen the integrity of its examination processes.

“In line with that new spirit of collaboration and partnership intended to help in stamping out all kinds of examination malpractices in the country, WAEC officials and leadership worked very hard with the Nigeria Police Force during the last August/September WAEC examination that was conducted across the country to fish out all persons that are perpetrating or aiding the perpetration of examination malpractices in any of its form within the country.

“It is in line with this new approach and partnership that we present to you today, a total of 17 suspects arrested from different parts of the country.

“Paradoxically the bulk of these suspects who are aiding the perpetration of these fraud and exam malpractices all happen to be persons who were employed, trained and paid to promote the educational system. I am talking of teachers. All of them are teachers.

“They are the ones that work as supervisors, invigilators or as the host teachers in the schools the exams are conducted.

“We want to issue this strong warning to members of the public out there including parents, guardians, teachers and even the candidates who are preparing to sit for subsequent examinations that we have been able, working in conjunction with WAEC, to develop very robust intervention approaches, very robust technologies that will always enable us to detect, trace and find anyone who has been involved in any form of cheating and fraud in WAEC exams.

“We therefore want to advise teachers, guardians, parents and candidates that the shortest cut to their success is indeed for them to sit down and prepare their wards and their candidates adequately for these exams. No other way will give them the kind of success they are looking for and no other way would take them to the destination they want to go.

“All these suspects would be arraigned before competent courts of law in the country. As I speak to you some of them have already been charged to court,” Mba said.

Mrs Omolemi Hassan, who represented the Head of National Office, WAEC Nigeria and Registrar to Council, appreciated the police for their collaboration.

“Indeed during the exams many people were talking about leakage and so on. There was no leakage at all. It was just a situation where those we trusted with our question papers, those who were nominated by Ministries of Education in different states, they were the ones after we gave them questions papers may be at 9am for an exam of 9.30am, they stopped to take pictures and put on websites and WhatsApp groups. They are indeed those who have tried to scuttle our efforts. But we thank God because we have a lot of devices within the council that detect malpractices”. (Daily Sun)

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