By Clement Wasike
The stench of rot wafts through the corridors of our examination halls in virtually every corner of Kenya. It is a smell we have grown accustomed to, a malodorous companion to the rustle of examination papers. This truth is so glaring especially in high school and tertiary levels yet we behave as if it is not rampant.
In recent months, we have witnessed the unedifying spectacle of cooks and school secretaries employees—whose duty should be far away from exam rooms—arrested for facilitating examination fraud. We have seen university students, the very acme of our intellect, apprehended for impersonating candidates, trading their futures for a pittance.
This is not merely a lapse in our exam ecosystems. It is a culture. It is a national shame that festers right across our education system. It is as if the certificate matters more than the competence it purports to represent. The recent arrests by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) appear nothing more than a superficial salve on a gaping wound.
If we are so eager to apprehend the foot soldiers of this fraud—the cook with a mobile phone, the university student writing an exam for a stranger—why do we remain silent when a few honest individuals oppose the vice? What do we tell ourselves as a society in our sleep when we wilfully turn a blind eye to the churning of unqualified graduates into a labour market already gasping for integrity?
We hold press conferences about when the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) results are announced knowing full well that cheating aided by teachers is becoming a norm. We do the same when the same the rot quietly consumes our universities. The recent suspension of a student at one of our public universities over an examination leak is a reminder of the complexities within our institutions. Yet, while the student faces the music, the system that enables the leak often plays on.
Before we grow too comfortable with exam cheating enough voices should be summoned to call the bluff. We cannot claim to be a nation that values merit when we systematically reward the opposite. The question we must ask, as we wring our hands over the annual cheating scandals, is simple: Are we truly fighting the epidemic, or are we merely selecting which symptoms to treat?
Time to make 180% turn is now.
Wasike is a former banker turned social critic and political commentator
