THE BIG WAEC SCAM

Few weeks ago, hundreds of angry students of the OBFO International Academy, Nsukka, Enugu State rained fire on their school located at Umuakashi Civic Centre. Their anger erupted like volcano on April 4 when final year students that paid for this year’s May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) discovered on the eve of the examination that they were blacklisted from writing the examination. Much to their chagrin, their school, located along Urban Girls Road, was listed among the 151 private schools purportedly closed down by the state government. 

 The crisis heightened when some newspapers (not Daily Sun) reported that the proprietor of the school, Luke Ushi-Joels, had absconded with over N34million collected from the students for the examination. Livid with shock, the OBFO candidates numbering 580 roared and hollered, demanding the head of the proprietor. And in his absence, they went on rampage and soldierly descended on facilities within the premises, including the huge metallic sign-post of the school. The anger brought down the towering post, forcing poor villagers into the homes in fear. The furor generated by this incident prompted the Daily Sun reporter to visit the troubled areas to dig further into the matter. 

Against earlier report that the proprietor of the school had gone into hiding with the loot, our reporter spoke with him in his personal office in Enugu on Thursday, May 3. He poured out his grief mixed with tears in an interview at the state capital, about 80kilometers away from Nsukka town. Daily Sun gathered that the Enugu State Ministry of Education and some proprietors of private schools in the area have been at dagger’s drawn, following some regulatory policies introduced in the area. The feud between the two parties left over 5000 students as casualties, following their exclusion from writing the on-going WAEC SSCE. 

 Trouble erupted in the area when the Commissioner for Education, Dr Simon Ortuanya, announced the closure of 151 schools after the last revalidation exercise conducted by his ministry. The proprietors of affected schools were still recovering from the shock when the Commissioner introduced a new quota system that reduced the number of candidates for WAEC in all the private schools in the state to 100 and 150 per school. Many private schools, with over 300 students in their SS3 class, were caught between the devil and the blue sea.

 In OBFO International Academy, there were 580 students that wanted to write the examination. As such, several private schools stood on the cliff of disaster, as the multiplying effect of these policies denied no fewer than 5000 students in the state from writing this year’s WAEC examination. The anguish of victims was irrepressible when the Commissioner refused to approve the class list submitted by the proprietor of OBFO International Academy and other schools that had more than 150 candidates for the examination. Some of the proprietors, who pleaded not to be mentioned, expressed disappointment over the incident. 

According to them, they were running government approved schools and paying the yearly renewal fees into government coffers. They said the Ministry never visited their school for inspection before the closure, describing the action as a hatchet job. Our reporter also spoke with some staff of the affected schools. Some of the proprietors claimed that it was a masked attempt by the government to strangulate them. They argued that the government was desperately trying to reverse the depleting population in public schools and save those institutions from their near desolate status. While explaining the popularity of his school in the area, one of the proprietors said he registered between 300 and 400 candidates for WAEC and NECO exams in previous years. But he lamented that the new quota system allotted him only 100 students for this year’s exam.

 He blamed the principals of public schools in the state of engineering the plot to force private school proprietors out of business. “This year, I had up to 280 students but the commissioner approved only 100 students for my school. He cut the list to 100. This came at a time when the money paid by the students as school fees has been used to upgrade some of the facilities in the school. Our school fees for the three terms was N35,000 but since the students could not write the exam, they forced me to refund their school fees. That cost me over N6million.

 I had to borrow from the bank to refund them”, he said. To increase the burden of these proprietors, the new policy has left their schools with empty classrooms. With few students in classrooms and a backlog of debt, many private schools in the state could be living on borrowed time. For instance, at OBFO International Academy, our reporter learnt that some parents hurriedly withdrew their children in junior classes from the school after the incident, such that in one of the classrooms, a young female teacher had only one student for the English lesson. And to worsen its crisis, the school gatekeeper, Idris, reportedly died in his sleep on May 2, casting another ominous silence over the 12-year-old institution.

 The sad incident in the school has left the proprietor with a bleeding heart. He could not hide his tears when our reporter called at his office, located at Nkpokiti Junction at the state capital. As he relived the memories of events in his school, he broke down in spasm of tears, clinching his chin with his right hand in unspeakable agony. He finally fought back tears and said, “They dealt with me. These people have ruined my reputation, my school. I am finished. Look at what this newspaper reporter wrote about me (Brandishing two copies of a national newspaper from his table)”. The embattled proprietor claimed he never absconded as widely reported, saying he was advised to stay out of the school to avoid fuelling the crisis.

 But he also took decisive steps to save the situation by alerting the students and security officials in Nsukka of the development when it dawned on him that the chances of participating in the exercise have been foreclosed. “I alerted my students on April 3 through SMS because practical chemistry would start on April 4. I wrote to the Commissioner of Police, the Chairman, Nsukka Local Government, the Area Commander, Nigeria Police, Nsukka, the DPO, Nsukka, the town union Chairman, seeking the protection of lives and property in the school. I knew anything could happen under this heat of passion from the students”, he said.

 Giving details of the incident, he said he went to the Enugu State Ministry of Education on January 26 to submit the list of students eligible for WASSCE but he was confronted with the sad news that his school was closed down. Although the letter to that effect was written on November 16, 2011 and signed by the Commissioner for Education, the proprietor claimed his school was informed of the development. He said the controversial letter was given to him by the Director, Inspectorate Department on March 7, 2011, few weeks to the closing date of the WAEC registration. Oshi-Joels said he wrote several letters to the Commissioner, explaining the implications of denying approval of the class list for the exam but his pleadings fell on deaf ears.

 He explained that apart from the 580 students from his school, no fewer than 5000 students from other private schools in other parts of the state suffered the same fate. Some proprietors, out of frustration, hurriedly ferried their students to schools in far away Kogi State to write the examination, he said. The proprietor said he initiated discussion with other neighbouring schools under the Enugu Zonal office of WAEC for affiliation but the process was scuttled by suspected agents of the government. Undeterred by the setback, he went further to Delta State, where he finally satisfied the terms for affiliation with two schools, Winners Academy International High School, Warri and Wisdom Secondary Commercial Academy, Warri.

 “We met their terms for the affiliation and then, we gave them three First bank Plc bank drafts for the sum of N3,393,000 covering the registration for our 580 candidates. These two schools subsequently remitted the above amount to WAEC, that is 290 candidates for each school, making it a total of 580 students”, he said. He said the registration process was duly completed at the WAEC branch office, Asaba, Delta State on January 31, 2012 and the personal identification number given to the two schools. Sadly, his hopes were dashed when he went for the passwords of the two schools to enable him upload the particulars of the candidates but the two schools backed down for inexplicable reasons. Having lost the battle at all fronts, the proprietor retreated to Enugu to bargain for the re-opening of his school. 

Since the deadline for WAEC registration was getting closer, he said his frantic letters to the ministry for re-inspection of his school slept longer than necessary in bureaucratic files. “A team of inspectors from the Ministry of Education, Enugu, finally came for the re-inspection on Wednesday, March 7 and our school was cleared vide a letter signed by Mrs M.C Oko, the Director, Inspectorate Department”, he said. His hope of scaling the hurdle was dashed when WAEC officials in Enugu failed to honour the earlier transaction at Delta State. So, he had to write to the Head of National Office, WAEC, through the branch controller, Asaba, requesting for a disarticulation from the two schools.  

In spite of his efforts, Oshi-Joels lamented that 580 candidates of his school were locked out of the regional exam because WAEC said the exam was close at hand and the printing of examination materials had been completed to tally with registered candidates. When our reporter visited WAEC office, Independence Layout, Enugu, none of the principal officers was available for comments. A junior staff told our reporter that the officials were monitoring the on-going SSCE examination in the state. One of the students who registered in OBFO but was later denied from writing the exam, Ibekwe Joshua, told our reporter that he contemplated suicide when he learnt of the sad state of their school.

 He said the disappointment caused by the incident forced several students into smoking in the school. “You need to see what happened on that day. Some of the students fainted and were rushed to the hospital. We were so angry that some boys went outside the school, bought cigarette and started smoking”, he said. The 22-year old boy said he came all the way from Union Primary School, Oduma, Aninri Local Government in Enugu West Senatorial zone to Nsukka to write the examination because the results of the school have never be withheld by WAEC. Aside the cost of living in Nsukka, he said the sum of N45,000 he spent for WAEC registration fee and school fees has compounded his misery.

 His desperation to write the exam was understandable, since he had written the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). He expectantly hoped to gain admission to the Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) but his failure to write the examination has obviously crushed that lofty ambition. Another devastated student, Francisca Obodo, a second year student of Health Technology, Oji River, lamented that stopping them from participating in the examination has plunged several students into academic crisis. She told Daily Sun that she needed the results desperately to continue her programme in the School of Health Technology because she finished from Nike Girls Secondary School, Enugu in 2002 with deficiency in some core subjects.

 With F9 in Mathematics in last year’s examination at his school, Community Secondary School, Aninri, 19-year Chukwueze Ezekiel told our reporter that he left Lagos to write the examination in Nsukka because he wanted to study diligently under the close supervision of his uncle, a lecturer at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He said he doled out the sum of N69,000 to the school proprietor, which he said covered the school fees for three terms, school uniform and WAEC registration fee. More pathetic was the case of Augustine Ashita, whose humble parentage nearly deprived him the opportunity of registering for the examination. He told Daily Sun that his parents were peasant farmers in the village, so, he pleaded with his brother to raise the sum of N64,000 for the examination. But now, he is licking his wounds in silence. 

Ashita urged the state government to rectify the problem in order to save thousands of fellow students from choosing wrong paths in life. His plea for immediate resolution of the crisis was re-echoed by his classmate, Onyeabor Juliet, who told our reporter that she left her hometown in Udi Local Government Area to Nsukka, where she paid N60,000 to write the examination. To calm the aggrieved students, the Proprietor of OBFO International Academy has promised to re-register all the affected students for the 2013 WAEC SSCE or its equivalent. Also, 300 students have already been registered for the NECO SSCE, which was the maximum number the exam body could take from a school.

 The school also sought accreditation from the National Business and Technical Education (NABTEB), with centre number 15068 and registered the remaining 180 students. But unfortunately, majority of the candidates shunned the exam, as only 40 came for biometric registration. As the cloud of uncertainty hovered over the school, the Principal, Anselm Abugu, wore a smile when Daily Sun spoke with him in the deserted staff-room of the school. He was busy distilling the gnawing fear in the hearts of his teachers, students and their worried parents, assuring them that the dark days would soon be over.

 However, his optimism could not raise the dampened hope of hundreds of other students, who are seething in resentment against the proprietor and the state government for denying them the such a golden opportunity. As proprietors and their students mourn their fate, the Enugu State Commissioner for Education, Dr Simon Ortunaya, told Daily Sun that the government had to wield the big stick to sanitize the private education sector that has gained notoriety for poor academic standard and examination malpractices. In a chat with our reporter in his office, he said the government embarked on revalidation exercise of all the private schools in the state, from where 151 schools failed to meet up with the minimum requirement for establishing private schools. 

He wondered why the affected schools went ahead and collected money from students to register them to register them for the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). On a sad note, he said those students that fell into the hands of such blacklisted schools acted in error. “We published the list of the affected schools. Unfortunately, some of these schools carried on as if nothing happened. And so, if your school was closed and you continued to carry on and you wanted to register your students for WAEC, then you are on your own.

 Fundamentally, you have not satisfied the condition”, he said Ortuanya accused some proprietors of running miracle centres, where they commercialize education and levy students heavily to aid them in examination malpractice. “These things are known to us. We have the statistics. If you like, I will read out 10 names of WAEC and JAMB examination centres where malpractice is going on. If you go there, you will see it. You know what I am saying. We know them. The problem with private schools is…there is something going on which you have not seen before.

 Before, they can register 600 or even 1000 and on exam day, they bring photocopiers and hire mercenaries to write and distribute to the so-called students. And they just merely copy. I will tell you something. We encountered somebody and we asked him, “How was the exam?” And he replied, “Well, I was able to copy what they gave me”. It is as bad as that. We see a continuous depreciation of our children. Their intellectual depreciation is because they are products of the so-called private school. I know we have some private schools that are very good, well organised, but you need to know who is even setting up a private school.

 How can somebody who didn’t even go to school wake up one day and start a school? What is the passion? What are you going to teach? Do you even know what is right and what is wrong? What is your own intellectual content that you will impart on other people? They are often interested that after the examination, they made so much money. That is their business”, he explained. To check the excesses, the Commissioner said his ministry had to review some of the intakes for public examination to ensure that only genuine students were registered. “As the ministry overseeing education, every school needs the approval of the ministry to register students for WAEC and NECO examinations. 

Therefore, the first step for every school is to go to the ministry and submit your proposed candidates and the ministry will now endorse before you collect money from the students for registration. So, you don’t collect money and seek approval by the ministry. It is only when the ministry approves your list that you now go back to collect money. What we did is that at the point of registration, we bring your school enrolment, maybe from SS2. If your school enrolment for SS2 is 200 and we now discover that you have 500 in SS3, we will approve 200 students for you. In many cases, we approved 150 because we have to look at the infrastructure. It is not just that you built a place for exam purposes.

 The place should function as a school. Now, basically, apart from those that were closed out rightly, we were awarding 150 or 200 students to each school. That was our position and we maintained that”, he said. Ortuanya said he later granted the proprietors the grace to register their students, following the intervention of the state governor. It was gathered that the National Association of Proprietors of Private School (NAPPS) was instrumental to the governor’s intervention in the matter. He said he was not aware that 5000 students were denied the opportunity of writing the examination, adding that schools that were closed down couldn’t have collected money from students. “But for those schools that were specifically closed down, it is a different thing. We have two categories.

 Those that have been closed down and have not been reopened until these things, they don’t have the right of claim and they do not have the right to ask to be released because fundamentally, their school is closed down. I can state clearly that I had a school like that called OBFO. We closed the school down and he appealed. Because of his appeal, we reviewed and approved 100 students for the school. Within this agreement, he is not supposed to register anything more than 100 but I read in the papers the other day that he registered over 500 students.

 This is wrong because the only condition for the release is for us to watch the school and see if he will start running it well, as a regular school. The report we get and we have also been there is that he just have a building where people come and write the examination”, he said. The Commissioner noted that another opportunity was given to those schools that were closed down to re-apply for review. According to him, 20 schools applied and they were reviewed and reopened based on the fact that they have met some of the requirements. Although OBFO International Academy was among the schools that were re-opened, the Commissioner explained why he turned down the list of 580 candidates for WAEC SSCE. “We can’t give him 580 because he doesn’t have the infrastructure. 

All we are saying is that people should see for themselves. I have no business with him. I don’t have any reasons. But I think the interest of our children is what should be paramount. And we are promising more of such. We cannot fold our arms. There is a difference between social service and profit. If you run for profit, you are just seeking your pecuniary interest. I read in the papers about the millions the proprietors are making. I am not interested in the money. If you are making all that money and you are treating the students well and you have a good learning environment, I have no problem with you. So, our basic interest is the future of our children and we don’t want to compromise it. People should not open schools because they want to make money. They should go and do other businesses. If you cannot sustain intellectual activity, go and trade. 

Schools should be left to serious-minded educationists, not traders”, he said. Reacting to the commissioner’s claim that some private schools have become miracle centres, Oshi-Joels said none of the public examination bodies has ever indicted his school for malpractice. He argued that the onus lies on the exam bodies to establish a case of examination malpractice against a school and impose appropriate sanctions. He also refuted claims of lacking the requisite knowledge to manage a school, saying, “I am part of this government. I am the Secretary of the Enugu State Industrial Estate Management Board. I was a member of the Post Primary School Management Board in Enugu State from 2003 to 2007. I know what it means to manage a school”.

 He argued that there was no justifiable reason to close his school because the ministry conducted no inspection or revalidation in the school. According to him, part of the reasons the ministry gave for closing down the school was that the school was operating in a garage. “The officials told me that they were informed that I was operating in a garage. When we reached the school, the inspectors were amazed. The commissioner knew my school because he is from Nsukka. It was not as if he is getting to know the place for the first time. Rather than accuse his school of abetting malpractice, Oshi-Joels argued that hw won the heart of students because he allows them to pay their fees by installments. 

According to him, students from poor background are encouraged to present themselves for the examination, even without meeting the financial requirement. “I know what other private schools are collecting. I came from a humble background. I believe that the economic background of these students must not deprive them the opportunity of secondary education. I know that if anybody gets this basic qualification, he wouldn’t have any limitation. We willingly take up the registration of students and allow them to pay gradually. We know that your original certificate is with us. Some people that could not make it in other places, by reason of their inability to pay the fees, find solace in our school”, he said.