David Nii Gyan, an official of the West African Examination Council has recounted a terrifying experience in the hands of the students of Bright Senior High School in Kukuratumi in the Eastern Region where he was stationed to monitor the ongoing WASSCE Examination.
According to him, the students surrounded him and other officials and offered him some hefty slaps and knocks on the instruction of the Headmaster identified as Bright Amponsah.
The students of the school on Thursday, August 6, 2020 went on rampage, attacking WAEC officials and destroying their mobile phones. They also pursued and attacked a reporter with the Daily Graphic who was on the school campus to report on the incident.The Headmaster has since been arrested.
Joynews’ Kofi Siew reported that the headmaster was set to address the media when the police arrived and whisked him away. He was taken to the Bureau of National Investigation in the Eastern Regional capital, Koforidua.
Speaking to the media after the attack, leader of the WAEC officials, David Nii Gyan blamed the headmaster of the school for the attacks on them. This he said was because they had stopped the students from engaging in examination malpractices.
He said the officials observed during supervision of the first paper which was written on Monday that the proprietor and staffs of the school were assisting the students with materials to engage in examination malpractices. They therefore decided to withdraw the school’s staff as invigilators of the examination.
The official stated that they had also gotten information that suggest that the school authorities had contracted people to write for some of the candidates as result, the officials decided to verify the candidates during the supervision of the paper.
In the course of the verification, they discovered that some of the students had in their possession text materials of the subject being written. The officials then demanded that the text materials be taken away from the students. Infuriated by this, the head of the school ordered the students to attack the officials supervising the examination.
“When they realized that now all their avenues have been blocked then the man got agitated. He went to the examination centre and then started shouting ‘all the candidates! all of you stop writing! come out! Stop writing! Come out!’ so based on that command, the candidates all stopped writing and then started messing up before we realized, they have surrounded us and then the man gave the command ‘ beat them! beat them! Collect their phones!’ They collected our phones, started beating us. Exhibits that I had on them, photocopy materials and things, they collected those things, (they) picked my money, picked things from me; officials documents, collected those things, my phones including the phones of colleagues. (They) destroyed our things.” A traumatized WAEC official recounted.
The reporter with Daily Graphic also alleged that the headmaster instigated the students to attack him when he was spotted taking videos of the incident.
In a related incident, students of the Ndewura Japka Senior High/Technical School who vandalized school’s properties in protest against social distancing in examination hall have been charged to pay for the repairs of the properties destroyed.
