By Evelyn Usman and Esther Onyegbula
THE Lagos State Police command has smashed a syndicate which specialised in the sale of the West Africa Examination Council, WAEC questions and answers to students.
Arrested were four suspected members of the syndicate, among them, a Physics and Mathematics teacher in one of the private schools in Ondo state.
The syndicate which also has its members in Ghana, was discovered to have created different Whatsapp groups where questions and answers of the on going WAEC were released to their agents who in turn sold them to WAEC candidates.
Surprisingly, all the questions and answers released via the Whatsapp groups were exactly the same as those written in the examination halls.
Also arrested was an operator of a fake WAEC centre at El-Supreme Private School located at 3, Oseni Adekogbe street, in Igbogbo area of Ikorodu, with the recovery of WAEC question papers and answer sheets suspected to have been forged.
In this case, the operator, Adeniyi Joshua, of El-Supreme Church was alleged to have swindled unsuspecting members of the public during registration for WAEC examination. He was said to have conducted the examination but ended up dumping the answer scripts in a school instead of taking them to WAEC designated points.
Parading the suspects before journalists at the command headquarters yesterday, the command boss, Edgal Imohimi, described the case of the syndicate who leaked questions and answers to WAEC candidates, as a national embarrassment. He disclosed that when intelligence report on activities of the syndicate was received, he deployed the Decoy team of the Rapid Response Squad , RRS to investigate and ensure the arrest of the saboteurs.
He disclosed that the arrest of the suspects were made in Edo, Osun and Ondo states .
He said : “Investigations revealed that these atrocities were committed through the following websites: www.ceebook. net – 07069198008; www.examloaded.com – 08162563540; www.guruscamp.com – 08132876664 ; www.solutionclass.com – 08060987041 and www.expotab.com – 09039642826. There were also 32 Whatsapp groups through which the questions and answers were sent. Four suspects; Samuel Kayode, (28) Adebayo Ifeoluwa, (17) Alayande Ahmed, (16 ) and Elusode Festus,( 20) were arrested , while other suspects are in Ghana.
“We discovered that the question papers given by these syndicates are word for word with the ones provided by WAEC for the candidates. The four suspects confessed and admitted to have committed the crime. Evidence of this was established through their mobile phones.”
Effort he said, was still in progress to get owners of the websites and also to find out how the question papers got out of WAEC office, adding that the command would liaise with the WAEC to unearth the insider connivance.
He therefore, advised parents, guardians and tutors to guide and monitor their wards against engaging in examination malpractices, but rather, encourage them to face their studies, informing that there was no short way to success. For the concerned examination agency, he advised “ It is important for you to look into this devastating development and take necessary corrective measures to prevent such leakage in future.”
When approached, the suspects admitted to the offence but claimed they only saw the questions which they in turn gave to WAEC candidates.
One of them, Samuel Ola, the Physics and Mathematics teacher said , “I saw a website on the internet through which I contacted one Danladi , who sold nine questions to me for N9000. I sent him N500 recharge card as requested before the questions were sent. Thereafter, I created a WhatsApp group which has 25 students.