Lagos - The mass failure of students who took the May/June 2011 West African School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) has been blamed on, amongst other thing; the inability of students to focus, their fear of mathematics, and even the boom of the Blackberry messenger culture.
Wrong.
Serious investigative journalism has now led to the true reason only 31 percent of students who sat for the examination managed to pass.
Based in a tip-off, a ring of unscrupulous hoodlums dealing in leaked exam papers has been uncovered.
These hoodlums usually lurk around schools and campuses, enticing students to buy their dubious merchandise by promising them that “You no longer need to sleep with your lecturer before you can pass.”
By infiltrating one of such gangs, this reporter discovered that the papers for the last WAEC exam proved difficult to secure through the normal channels (bribing lecturers to sell them in advance of the exams) because the usual accomplices wanted too much money this time around.
Due to this development the criminals turned to a website that boasted possession of every leaked exam paper in the world.
From the website, henchmen of the gangs bought what was supposed to be the leaked WAEC exam papers and sold same to thousands of Nigerian students who were about to take the exams.
In the end, almost 70% of the students had paid for copies of the exam questions downloaded from the website.
The rest is history.
Further investigation revealed that the website from which the fake papers were sourced is hosted in China.
-Malam Sule