WAEC: The Shylock Businessman

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) was born out of repressive move to end imperialism and Western influence in Africa by African elites in the mid20^th Century. It was not until 1952 that the junior and Senior Cantab examinations instituted since 1876 for British West African Students who opted for the Durham and Cambridge University were severed in replacement for genuinely West African Examination Body. Like its predecessor, the West African Examination Body was/is charged with responsibility of conducting, organizing, and managing examinations in the region; plus fashioning its own curricula suitable for the region.“For the first twenty years (1952-1972),” as put by Anthony Kamara, “the conduct of school exams had been free of scandals.” Those were the days of nationalism.

However, like many of Africa’s institutions, the WAEC is becoming a useless and exploitative force for the sons and daughters of Africa. It has unjustly killed and is killing the aspirations of many of our young generation. Above all, it is losing recognition in many parts of the world. The World is becoming a global village, and Africa is becoming more united than ever. We cannot afford being obstinate on standard. Literarily, our institutions should go global in terms of standard.

With Morocco’s call for its reinstatement into the AU, the precatory move to launch an AU passport for Africa overall to facilitate intra-trade and ensure travel boredom relieve for all Africans, businesses and institutions must take a preparative steps to upgrade its standards and services so as to withstand the gale of competition once the borders are eroded by this ambitious policy action permitting for more inter-country movement.

The placement of WAEC (since 1952) as the soul gate keeper to Sierra Leone education is the biggest reason, among other reasons, for the retrogressing state of our education in this era of competitiveness; and no one seems to care or be concerned about the several abnormalities in the external examinations so far. If there is one thing we know for sure about the way WAEC administer its questionnaires, for Sierra Leone, it is that they receive question papers in cartoons delivered to them printed from nowhere we know into their Tower Hill head office in Freetown where they are counted and enveloped for distribution across its different centers, during which course its confidants pilfer some questionnaires for its rogue clients. No wonder question papers are mostly found short when ready for distribution in examination halls. They will give a bogus excuse of investigating the matter when asked to say something. And no one questions them—the institution is a sacred cow. And when such dubious acts are committed, it is the poor and sometimes innocent pupils who suffer. Some of whom would have their results being withheld with or without (which is far too often the case) committing any examination malpractices. And government does nothing about it. They do this with impunity. Government or its agencies mount no investigation into the matter. They do not want to know, for instance, the circumstances which led to the leakage or say who were in charge of question papers at the central offices, nor do they care to ask whether those pupils whose results were withheld by WAEC had fill any form during their course of taking the examination incriminating them. All they do is stand aside and watch their youth’s feature being put into jeopardy.

Worse of all, the WAEC in several instances have shown unprofessionalism and incompetence in terms of keeping accurate record of pupils. They are much disorganized in all ways. Time without number we have seen cases where pupils retrieve their online and school attestation results with their faces either missing or unidentifiable to/with them. A boy could be given a girl’s face, a girl with a man’s face, and sometimes pupils’ names and information are disfigured (pupils sometimes receive on their attestations result credit for subjects that they did not put in for in the examination), which put to question the accuracy and authenticity of retrieved results. It takes at least 3 years for successful students to receive original copy of their results (18 months for Gambia); they get short of question papers and answer booklets(the case of St. Francis Secondary School in 1978/79, and many more); they do not have control of their officials and question papers but could seize helpless students’ results for comparison; leakages pup up rampantly almost every year without any of their officers being caught culpable, so on and so forth, the institution continues to demonstrate their incapability and redundancy without any actions taken. I wonder why until now the government has not issued WAEC a business license. Question papers are available for sale before exams; supervisors should be bought for a certain amount to compromise their supervision; pupils should hasten to Freetown to see officers who mark their answer booklets lest it is too late; pupils who want to pursue their courses overseas are granted placement into the archives altering another person’s information; script markers are paid based on the number of booklets they could complete within a given period of time (as if it is motor speed race);and government aiding their enterprise by permitting for investigation only for reasons why results are seized and not reasons for leakages.

Instead of recruiting more qualified teachers, building more classrooms to accommodate the growing number of pupils, equipping schools with libraries and theatres, and putting the curricular designs for schools in per with the job market, the Government and its politburos are busy devising ways to prolong the lifespan of schooling, and in filtering out pupils who either because of poor educational system or other socioeconomic factors cannot make it in the BECE or WASSCE. In the words of Anthony Kamara (Snr), “…they are focused on next election.”

Equally responsible for this retrogressing state of education in this country are the local elitists. It is fascinating how parliament in a matter of short time could sign into effect the switchover policy from 6334 system to 6344 system of education which basically adds one more year in the seniorhigh.This policy action they believe, as put forward in Professor Gbamanja whitepaper, would give teachers enough time to complete the broad WAEC syllabus for the senior high, and help reduce the number of failures in the WASSCE. Fundamentally I see this move as a deliberate attempt to further worsen the dropout rate among female students who have been victims of everyday abuse and exploitation by teachers. Male students would equally suffer indirectly if their sponsors cannot afford paying for them for another protracted year, considering the fact that the average Sierra Leonean is either underemployed or a proletariat living on less than $2 a day. Plus theno-gratis policy for repeaters, the thin line between the ‘have’ and ‘have not’ is boldly drawn. The policy action has the potential to worsen inequality and create a mass underemployment among youth, and further broaden the poverty circle for most families. The rich could afford to pay for their children to take the private WASSCE if they fail at first attempt, whilst the poor who cannot afford the charges for the examination should take to ‘OKADA’ riding or any other underemployed career to survive the system— the class system.

Furthermore, looking at the entire educational system of Sierra Leone today, a lot of frustrations lies within the expectation of people in the government to make serious adjustments in the system and all these adjustments are more attached to the way in which Exams are conducted in both internal and external level. The educational system of this country is really is becoming more deteriorated every day and an angle that is contributing to this tragedy is the country’s reliability on the WAEC as body responsible for external exams throughout the country. Exams are now conducted with less or no attention paid to the possible malpractices that might take place or factors that may provoke the value of the results of these external examinations.

Our reliability on WAEC is one of the greatest weaknesses of our country today in maintaining a highly structured and fair educational system. Students manage to squeeze out of their ability to sustain themselves and pay for  entry into this external examinations, they spend their valuable time and additional amount of money in preparing themselves to go for the exams and at the end their results from the external exams will be ceased with no exact evidence or reasons. There is no mechanism to make sure that students who have their results ceased are given the chance to defend these results and at the end of everything what happens is that students become frustrated and out of option in choosing their path of life. This frustration has amounted to a huge amount of discouraged and highly disgruntled youths roaming about the streets with no job, no hope and this really put the future our country at stake. WAEC should be one of those factors to give high considerations to if we want to restore the educational system of our beloved Sierra Leone to a more world standard one. Exams are conducted with a high malpractice tendency, less external exams austerity measures and above all innocent students are mixed with the guilty ones when it comes to ceasing results in the name of Exams malpractice reasons. How can a body with such a disorganized system be given the responsibility to oversee the conduct of our country’s most important exams in the educational system.

Maybe we should take WAEC as a business entity established to maximize profit; in accounting the higher the revenue, the higher the tendency to make profit and for WAEC this means the higher the failures especially in WASSCE, the higher the tendency for them to make profit. Taking in facts, the sharp and fast increase in the cost of a scratch card to access result is one good factor to evaluate whether the so called exams body WAEC is operating as a business entity or an independent fair educational system ingredient established for effective facilitating of external exams in our country. WAEC has been very instrumental in not only frustrating the educational sector of this country but it has also succeeded in creating some virus that will grow to destroy the other advantage the system has if it has to revive ever again; the question is, How long are we going to sit and watch while this single exam body destroy our most precious educational system or we are going to do something about it.

The world is really moving forward and very fast, maybe Sierra Leone should too. If we are to move forward, we must start with fixing what needs to be fixed in our educational system—creating new credible means of assessing our students.

Challenges of Writers in Africa: A Growing Art in a Challenged Continent

Challenges of Writers in Africa: A Growing Art in a Challenged Continent

T

he biggest threat to Africa’s progress perhaps has been retaining its intellectual capital. A paradoxical phenomenon overlooked by most of its political authorities’ overtime. As Scott Firsing puts it in his (January 21, 2016) online article “Staying Home: How Severe is Africa’s Brain Drain?”, “The Push and pull factors of this brain drain are wide-ranging and complex, and depend upon the African Country” in question. According to a 2013 United Nations survey on the social status of African migrants, one among nine Africans who leave the continent has acquired tertiary education. Political instability, wars and economic crises across the continent are the major causal factors to mass emigration, especially of recent, which stories have been featured in most of its bulky writings, creative writing submissions in particular. Like its mineral resources, the West has for decades been the final destination of Africa’s intellectual capital for centuries since.

However, we should note that instability and wars are not unique to Africa, yet, economic stagnation and identity crises are eminent epidemic the continent has been struggling to divorce with.

First thing first, the fact that politics has evidently become the most lucrative job space for local elites since Africa’s independence (many activists blame poor economic diversification in the continent for this), the young and upcoming generation of elites are all swayed to pursuing courses in political science, law, etc. (especially pupils in the Arts streams), and see a career in writing as a child’s play, and, worst of all, columnists as failures. Universities hardly offer courses in literature and creative writing (there is no need to, since students could not enlist for an old-man career). This in turns makes the art a less lucrative. In effect, the greater proportion of books in the libraries in the Sub-Sahara Africa, especially West Africa, is Occidental. The few that could write are virtually discouraged by the poor appetite for reading exhibited by its growing elitist mass. The spillover effect of this is, therefore, making the business of publishing books unmarketable in Africa, more so creative writing and fictions.

African writers measure their success in terms of what publishing house in the West published their works—a mentality I consider as identity crises. The result is too much time and resources are spent on lobbying western publishing houses to publish their works, which production they are required to purchase at the end or make special order for at high cost to gain access to them. What an intellectual abuse! In many instances they risk losing their intellectual capital right and go uncelebrated in their home country because they could not afford to pay for their work. Worst of all is that this provokes perversion of its knowledge and intellectual capital to developed countries, where they create little or no impact.

Bad social policy, if so to say, has been blamed for the derailment of the career. An overwhelming number of critics blame their governments for what they called irrational prioritization of its social development plan. The library has not been an integral part of the school system in most parts in Africa. In many instances governments in the region reduced their budget allocation to national libraries furnishing and charge the institutions with the responsibility of buying books written or published locally—a deliberate move to exempt local writers from their shelves and give way to Western publications, since the library is not a business entity. There are countless learning institutions, both secondary schools and tertiary institution, without a library or theater centers for students and facilitators use.

Indeed most troubling of all are the dwindling culture of reading and a show of inattention to conducting research among the continent’s students and scholars alike. It is not rare to find lecturers and academics copying notes verbatim from textbooks without acknowledgement of its authors and circulate them out to students as lecture notes, nor is it rare to find students pay lecturers and outsiders to prepare their final college thesis and present it to the institutions unchecked for project showcase in its dusty shelves to impress visitors and sponsors. In this case, this does not only permit for students plagiarism and discouragement of creative thinking and writing among its students, but then this is leading to falling standards in the education system of the continent and rendering learning institutions irrelevant to nation development. Lest we forget, a greater proportion of the continent’s scholars cannot operate a computer, and the very worst is, they find it almost baffling to deal with sophisticated cellphones of the time. And so, they are less exposed to online textbooks and outlets, which form major components of contemporary research in the West. The few that could use these devices, are challenged with poor internet facilities (thanks to Africa’s progressive infrastructure), lack of electricity supply to operate the devices, sourcing authentic materials, and most often than not, they cannot afford buying full textbooks from eBook sites either because of the lack of bank account or unavailability and complexity of the channel of payment in most parts of Africa. All these factors combined are making the art of writing sluggishly lagging behind in the continent.

Faithfully enough, to every problem there is solution; and the way forward is addressing the issue from local to national and perhaps, only then could it impact regional level.

The library is not an isomorphic body to learning institutions. It should be treated as an integral body of academia. Government should invest in construction and furnishing of libraries to promote research, and place value on locally published works by creating special fund for the purchase of locally published works, so inspiring a new generation of writers and increasing the chance for financial reward of local publishers.

And this in turn could attract publishing houses to the continent and whet the appetite of the young generation of elites to write and make a career in the art.

Also, learning institutions and partners should bestow confidence on locally published books, and organize book-fares awards for good writers so to celebrate their career and inspire students. Lecturers’ lesson notes should be verified by Dean of academics in the colleges to discourage plagiarism and promote the standard of education. Students’ thesis should be properly supervised by lecturers with the aim of keeping them on track and supporting their creative thinking ability. Lest we forget, tertiary institutions should have equipped theater centers and library system that promote both performance art and research. It is only when we change the mindset of the upcoming generation and assure them of a lucrative career in writing and research that we can succeed in making a functional society and a diversified economy.

Still at national level, government should invest in infrastructural development. As many of its finest critics put it, government has the mandate to facilitating progress (in other words, bring about progress, not necessarily bring it). Priorities most be directed at providing computer literacy to pupils before they enter tertiary institutions, this will formidably prepare them for the job market and make them more productive; and to some extent reduce the constrains they may face in writing. But then, also, this could only hold when there is full supply of electricity and improved internet services at affordable rates for everyone. There is also the need for local publishing houses to be innovative and adaptive for sustainability of service. They should create electronic book marketing spaces that encourage payment in local currencies or means, which would allow for easy and guarantee service to readers.

Amadu Wurie Jalloh, Students Analysts and Writers Network, Sierra Leone