Challenging Heights wishes to condemn the apparent collaborative fraud taking place within the West Africa Examinations Council (WAEC), and calls on the authorities to take immediate action to address the situation.
In the last one week since the release of the November/December WASSCE results, some unknown people with known phone numbers, have been using MTN Mobile Money to defraud unsuspecting candidates. Those fraudsters introduce themselves as staff of WAEC, and claim to have access to the WAEC results database. These fraudsters promise to better the grades of candidates for a fee. These individuals are asking for the parents of unsuspecting candidates to pay monies some as high as GHC5,000.
WAEC has confirmed knowledge of these fraudulent activities, but have denied that those fraudsters are staff of the Council.
We find it worrying, that without any investigations, WAEC will conclude that those involved in this fraud are not officers of the Council. If they are not within the Council, then how did they have access to information on the candidates, names, telephone numbers, and so on?
We believe the integrity of the results coming from WAEC might have been compromised in many ways. There is obvious security breach at the Council’s databases, and this breach could result in anything, including a compromise to the results of the candidates.
There is enough evidence for WAEC to act. There is enough information on the identities of those involved in the fraud. By now some people should have been arrested. We are therefore calling for immediate actions to address this situation, and to restore the confidence the general public have in the Council.
In the meantime, we are calling on the general public to ignore any call from anybody offering to change their results at WAEC for a fee. It is fraud, and you can be arrested if you are found to be inducing fraud.
Dr. James Annan
(President)