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Social Commentator and Financial Analyst, Sydney Casley Hayford, has said the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) is probably one of the most corrupt institutions operating in the country.

His comment follows the recent reported leakage of at least three papers in this year’s ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

Reports on Wednesday revealed that some students in the Greater Accra and Eastern Regions had access to the examination papers between 12:00am midnight and 4:00a.m on the day the papers were written.

The papers that allegedly leaked included Oral English, Integrated Science paper and Social Studies. There were also pictures on social media showing students copying answers.

Speaking on Citi FM’s news analysis programme, The Big Issue, Casley Hayford said he was disappointed that such a scandal hit the Council again especially after they assured government they were instituting measures to deal with the problem when a similar situation happened last year.

There have consistently been reports of leakage of examination questions in both WASSCE and Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), which has raised questions about the credibility of certificates issued by WAEC.

In 2015, about five BECE papers were cancelled after WAEC revealed that those papers had been compromised.

There is more to it

Commenting on these developments, Casley Hayford indicated that there is more to the situation than just the leakage.

"WAEC is probably one of the most corrupt institutions in this country…If we sat down and got serious with this, you will find out that there is more to it than just leaking exam results. I don’t see why we cannot dissolve the[WAEC] board because you [WAEC] cannot continue tarnishing the results.”

Casley Hayford therefore called for strict measures to deal with the problem, saying “I would have loved to hear some statistics that tells the number of leakages recorded over the years. Unfortunately here is the failing of our education system and the failing of our own system. We don’t have anything that we can use to unravel and analyse the problem.Having the statistics will help us deal with the problem.”