Four suspected members of an alleged racketeering syndicate are now in the soup for what the police described as selling forged West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) question and answer sheets.
The Lagos State Police Command is questioning them for their alleged role in the syndicate.
Samuel Kayode, 28; Adebayo Ifeoluwa, 17; Alayande Ahmed, 16; and Elusode Festus, 20 were arrested in Ondo, Edo and Osun States.
Their alleged accomplices, said to be in Ghana, are being trailed.
Their arrest followed reports that a syndicate was leaking exact questions and answers WAEC set for the 2018 May/June examination to some websites and WhatsApp groups subscribed to by students.
Parading the suspects, Police Commissioner Imohimi Edgal, said they were arrested by undercover operatives of the Rapid Response Squad (RRS).
Two of them are said to be Physics and Mathematics teachers in a private school in Ondo State.
Also paraded was an operator of a fake WAEC center at El-Supreme Private School, Igbogbo ,Ikorodu, who allegedly defrauded people seeking to write WAEC by giving them forged questions and answer sheets.
According to Edgal, Joshua Adeniyi of 3, Oseni Adekogbe Street, swindled hundreds of people seeking to register for WASCE, conducted examinations for them but dumped the answer scripts in his school.
Edgal said : “Recovered from him are WAEC question papers and answer sheets suspected to have been forged, as well as photographs of all the victims who registered with him.”
Edgal said the syndicate that leaked correct questions and answers three days to WAEC was a national embarrassment.
He said: “Investigations revealed that these atrocities were committed through the following websites: www.ceebook.net (07069198008); www.examloaded.com (08162563540); www.guruscamp.com (08132876664); www.solutionclass.com (0806098704) and www.expotab.com (09039642826).
There were also 32 WhatsApp groups through which the questions and answers were sent.
“We discovered that the question papers given by these syndicates are word for word with the ones provided by WAEC for the candidates. The four suspects confessed and admitted to have committed the crime. Evidence of this was established through their mobile phones.
“Efforts are in progress to arrest owners of the websites and also establish how the questions and answers got out of WAEC office. The command would liaise with WAEC to fish out any insider saboteur.
“It is important for WAEC to look into this devastating development and take necessary corrective measures to prevent such leakages in future.”
Admitting to the crime, Ola said: “I saw a website on the internet through which I contacted one Danladi, who sold nine questions to me for N9000. I sent him N500 recharge card as requested before the questions were sent. Thereafter, I created a WhatsApp group which has 25 students.
“I released these questions and answers to the students on the platform. They only gave me N200 recharge card for each subject. But some of the subjects did not work out.
“Only subjects like Geography, Government and Biology clicked while English and Mathematics didn’t. I started teaching two years ago. I am a Physics and Mathematics teacher.”
Ifeoluwa, a student at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, said he created a WhatsApp group called ‘MCC’ where he shared leaked the leaked questions and answers.
An Iron bender, Festus Elusode said he created two WhatsApp groups, ‘WAEC Home of Expo’ and WAEC VIP,’ where he posted the leaked examination questions and answers.
Ahmed said he also saw the information on the internet and syndicated it to other groups he belonged to.