Exams and the ‘Wushishi’ Option

By Olusegun Adeniyi

Having built a system that encourages ‘success’ at any cost, it is no surprise that increasing numbers of students (at all levels of education in Nigeria) are being led to believe that cheating pays. So prevalent is the menace of examination malpractice that many of the post-primary students I have interacted with in recent years keep telling me: ‘Everybody is doing it’. Of course, I am well aware that not everybody is doing it but we should nonetheless be concerned by the recent revelation of the Education Minister, Dr Tunji Alausa, regarding the ‘mind boggling’ leakages of National Examinations Council (NECO) questions in recent years.

During the 2025 examination period, which he described as the hardest period of his life, Alausa said his colleague, the Minister of State, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad, repeatedly sent him leaked questions obtained from students ahead of the examination. “I would wake up to her text. She would send questions to me… She would say, ‘I just got this question.’ It could be English or Chemistry. I would send it to the HNO (Head of National Office at NECO) and ask, ‘HNO, is this correct?’ And the answer I got was, ‘Unfortunately, that’s the question we’re doing today.’”

The challenge, according to Alausa, began years ago with an interesting codename. And a brief digression may be important here. Professor Ibrahim Dantani Wushishi was first appointed the Registrar/Chief Executive of NECO in July 2021 by the late President Muhammadu Buhari. He was retained by President Bola Tinubu. Members of the syndicate involved in examination malpractices have turned this illustrious name (Wushishi) into a slang for their nefarious activities. Seeking to obtain the questions ahead of NECO Examinations has become ‘Going to Wushishi’ but only the initiated understood. “I didn’t know that ‘Wushishi’ meant going to the dark website”, Alausa confessed while further revealing that examination malpractices have become both systemic and endemic and that tackling the challenge would require the collaboration of all stakeholders. “Any child can be bad,” he said. “But when we have an ecosystem where parents, schools, teachers, invigilators and principals are in full connivance, the students are the smallest players. The people who should put the deterrents in place are the ones involved…”

We must commend both Alausa and Ahmad for confronting this menace head on. I have heard a lot of good things about the duo. The fact that they work together seamlessly without the usual friction you see in most ministries is in itself testimony to the fact that their focus is to serve the public good. But the challenge they confront on this issue is an old one and will require the support of all stakeholders. We must understand that examination malpractice not only undermines fairness and equal opportunity but it also raises questions about the integrity of the qualifications we all parade while portending a great danger to the quality of human capital in our country.

From my findings, a monumental scandal about examination malpractice in Nigeria blew open about five years ago at the tertiary level. But somehow, it escaped public attention. Following admission racketeering involving a private university in Ibadan and IJMB results verification exercise which revealed that only six of the results of 148 Direct Entry candidates sent to a famous federal university in the North were found to be genuine, the Federal Ministry of Education early in 2021 collaborated with the security agencies to institute a sting operation. Codenamed ‘Operation Y’, according to sources, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), the Department of State Services (DSS) and Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) were involved in the exercise which eventually revealed “organised cheating rings, candidate impersonation, and payment schemes for live questions and answers,” to game examinations in Nigeria.

The investigation at the instance of the then Education Minister, Mallam Adamu Adamu, was restricted to IJMB examination and the role of ‘tutorial centres’ by the universities. And the 315-page report (which I have read) of the Joint Universities Preliminary Examinations Board (JUPED) chaired by the then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, is damning. Working with then JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede who was concerned about the integrity of examinations through which students entered universities and had raised internal alarm, Adamu tasked the committee to conduct a forensic audit of answer scripts during the 2021 JUPEB Conference Marking exercise.

Findings from the forensic audit made chilling revelations: Identical answers and handwriting in multiple scripts of different candidates, use of mobile phones and digital watches in the examination halls and scripts with answers from WhatsApp or smuggled notes, etc. “Unlicensed and unqualified tutorial centres have hijacked IJMB and JUPEB programmes. These centres recruit students, conduct coaching, and facilitate widespread examination malpractices, often with the tacit approval of affiliated universities chasing revenue,” according to the report which also revealed massive forgery. “For example, according to Professor Yahuza Bello (immediate past VC) of Bayero University, Kano, 95% of IJMB qualifications presented by candidates who applied to BUK in 2020 were found to be fake during the verification exercise conducted by the University.”

The report made several recommendations, including that examination centres install high-quality CCTV to be permanently monitored and prevent the use of mobile phones and other electronic devices by deploying “metal detectors to screen candidates before entering into the examination venues in all Centres; and use of Signal Blockers/Network Jammers at all Centres during examinations.” Also recommended is a system of administering various customised versions of the questions in all the examinations to make cheating difficult for students. “There should be full biometric capture of all ten fingerprints at registration to curb impersonation.”

Although 42 candidates were arrested—with their names listed against the examination offences each committed—there is no record that anyone of them was ever brought to trial. But the report, which I understand is currently being implemented by Alausa, also proposed the establishment of a centralised database of all examination candidates to ensure that each is tied to a unique identifier e.g. National Identification Number (NIN). “This would mean that a candidate can be identified at every level of examination across his/her educational journey.”

However, while these reforms are helpful for the integrity of examinations in Nigeria, the concern is the way young children are being exposed to fraudulent practices so early in their lives by those who ordinarily should guide them in the right direction. There are reports that some private schools have adopted the philosophy of ‘heaven helps only those who help themselves’ by appointing what they call ‘Exam Officer’ whose duty basically is to ‘liaise’ with invigilators during examinations. The reason for it is because when parents pick schools for their children, they look at their ‘WAEC records’. Meanwhile, the JUPEB report illustrates this challenge by stating that “corruption and organised examination-fraud syndicates are being supervised by a gang of owners of tutorial schools under the aegis of the Association of Tutorial School Owners (ATSO). Agents set up WhatsApp groups through which sensitive relevant information is transmitted to Candidates.” That precisely is what we are dealing with at the post-primary level.

In July 2019, I used the comment thread on X (then Twitter) to illustrate a moral wilderness that has contributed to examination malpractices in Nigeria. It all started from a simple tweet by someone evidently looking for sympathy and perhaps another job: “I lost my teaching job today (32K) where I teach (Maths and F/Maths), because I refused to assist the students in the exams hall (during NECO) having taught them very well…” What followed was a deluge of negative comments. “You should have helped them, you put yourself into this (situation),” one respondent wrote before the next one came with a sharp rebuke: “If I had a good job waiting, I won’t employ you for this tweet.” Then there was this ‘do-gooder’ who shared his experience: “I remember my Account teacher also refused to do this for our WAEC then, and I ended up teaching the whole students offering that subject that day.”

Of course, not all the critical commentators were unsympathetic going by this response laced with a dose of ‘realism’ about the environment under which the teacher was operating: “Sorry about that but it’s your fault…it’s not a bad option assisting students. We are in Nigeria.” That familiar refrain was further amplified by the next respondent: “Are you a good teacher when your students fail? I got my current job through the help of a parent I taught the ward some years back…the ward is in FUNAAB (Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta) now doing fine. My dear, don’t let us deceive ourselves, you should have pushed…” For the benefit of readers who may not understand what ‘pushing’ means, the next person minced no word: “You should have just assisted them. Now, what have you gained? African teachers are terrible and just love to see students fail exams.” The last response before I stopped following the thread was the crisp title of the piece I wrote at the time: ‘Na you fuck up!’

Despite the stiff penalties in the Examination Malpractices Act, 2004 for erring candidates, dubious invigilators and teachers, as well as desperate parents and school proprietors who help to compromise the integrity of academic examinations, I am not aware that anybody has ever been brought to justice on this malaise. Yet, what should trouble us most about Alausa’s revelation is not that a man’s surname has been curdled into a slang for examination malpractices, but rather that an entire generation grew up fluent in that fraudulent shorthand. In the JUPED Report earlier referenced, it is stated that Nigeria “has a duty to monitor and checkmate the menace of exam malpractices for it is capable of compounding the myriads of problems, particularly corruption, which is ravaging the country despite numerous efforts of the government to combat it.” And understatement!

As an aside, I did my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Primary Assignment at the then Zungeru College of Advanced Studies (ZUCAS) which has since become Niger State Polytechnic. At the time (1989/90 session), the Corpers’ Residence (where we were accommodated) was in Wushishi. To now hear a sinister interpretation of ‘Going to Wushishi’ sullies the good memories of the one year I spent in that town where General Ibrahim Babangida and another famous retired General hail from. But the most worrying aspect of this tragedy is that for every culprit caught while attempting to ‘Wushishi’ their way to ‘success’ through unearned academic grades, numerous others have escaped: Protected by parents, proprietors and teachers for whom only the end justifies the means and a society that has long confused certificates with competence.

Bello Mandiya’s Passing
For some inexplicable reason, hardly a week passes without me having to be at the Muslim section of the Gudu Cemetery in Abuja for a burial ceremony. But none of my recent experiences was as sobering as Tuesday’s when Waziri Adio and I had to witness the burial of our dear friend and brother, Senator Bello Mandiya. Three weeks ago, Mandiya visited my office (‘just to say hello’, as we say in Nigeria) and spent more than an hour before he left. There was no premonition that it would be our last encounter.

A graduate of Mass Communication from the University of Lagos where he met mutual friends, including Lanre Issa-Onilu (who was also at the burial on Tuesday), Bolaji Abdullahi, Ose Oyamendan, Shina Badaru, Simon Kolawole, Wale Adebanwi, Waziri and many others, Mandiya was a frequent visitor to THISDAY Lagos head office in the early years and that was where I first met him. He would later join politics, starting out in 2003 as a legislative aide, then acting Chief of Staff to then House of Representatives Speaker, Rt. Hon. Aminu Bello Masari. Between 2015 and 2019, Mandiya served as Chief of Staff to the same Masari as Governor of Katsina State. And then in 2019, he was elected as a Senator for Katsina South. Mandiya, of course, didn’t return to the Senate in 2023.

An intensely private, self-effacing and affable man who lived a simple life, Mandiya was always available for friends whenever they needed him. Sadly, it was at his burial that many had to show up for him on Tuesday. May God grant Mandiya eternal life and may He comfort his bereaved family.