Opposition leader Raila Odinga warned Tuesday that corruption and greed at the highest levels of government have compromised the integrity of national exams, calling it an “existential threat” to the country’s education system.
“The buck stops with His Excellency William Ruto,” Raila Odinga said in a statement. “Mega corruption in billions cannot happen without the complicity of the top.”
Odinga accused the administration of President William Ruto of abruptly canceling a contract with a respected British printing company that had helped restore faith in the exam system and instead awarding it to a local firm that then outsourced the job to India.
“We believe this process, of a sudden change of printer and having them printed on short notice, is responsible for the disaster we have witnessed with respect to KCPE,” Odinga said, referring to issues with the release of accurate results for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exams taken by around 1.4 million students late last year.
The problems were compounded when the contract for relaying the results via text message was “taken away from the original provider and awarded on short notice and corruptly to a company that does not have the capacity to handle the same,” Odinga said in the statement.
As a result, he said, “for the first time in our country, some children are in court, seeking to establish their true grades while the education ministry is admitting students to form one, including those still challenging the marks they were awarded.”
Odinga, who has run unsuccessfully for president five times, warned that devaluing the integrity of exams — long aSource of national pride in Kenya —- would subject students to “ridicule” and limit their opportunities abroad.
“It is a universally accepted principle that the collapse of the education system is the collapse of a nation,” he said.
Odinga sent letters to education groups, teachers unions, anti-corruption watchdogs and religious organizations urging a collective effort to secure the integrity of exams. But he expressed doubt that official corruption investigations would yield anything useful.
“We believe political interference will not allow the EACC and DCI to deal with this matter,” he said, referring to the ethics and anti-corruption commission and directorate of criminal investigations.
