2021 WASSCE leakage: Dr. Okoe Boye scolds WAEC for behaving like 'tin god'

Former Deputy Health Minister, Dr. Bernard Okoe-Boye, has called for checks and balances on the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to stop the misconduct of officials and the continual leakage of examinations questions.

Dr. Okoe-Boye was disgusted by this recurring habit of leaking questions to students which has become a major challenge to knowing which students put up their own good performances and passed the exams.

To him, the main problem has to do with WAEC's autonomy in conducting exams.

"Any organization that doesn't tolerate discussion and talk on how to improve the system, with time, they will lose their relevance. There are some organizations which have become like tin gods . . . more often than not, we give organizations autonomy so that people won't interfere in their job, so that they can impact greatly on society but over time, they use the autonomy to push away supervision and suggestions," he said during a panel discussion on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo'.

Dr. Okoe-Boye believed WAEC can improve only when the officials open up for adjustments and transformations.

"If you can have a workshop or a conference, even one day conference on how WAEC can improve and become an impervious institution . . . when they say a system is impervious, it means it's air-tight . . . WAEC can become impervious but it will be difficult that a person who has worked at WAEC for the past 30 years will advice himself/herself on how to make it impervious. It doesn't happen anywhere . . . One other thing for us to note is that anytime you empower someone and there's nobody to checkmate them, you're in trouble," he further stated.

He added, ''The answer is in inviting proposals, being open to suggestions and more importantly there must be someone to check WAEC . . . Every single project can be improved. We don't need a soldier. What we need is an open accommodative attitude."