7 invigilators arrested for preparing answers for candidates on day 1 of 2026 BECE - WAEC's Head of Public Affairs

The Head of Public Affairs of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) John Kapi has disclosed that seven invigilators have been arrested on day one of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

Speaking in an interview 3news on May 4, Mr Kapi said the incident happened in three regions.

"So we've had about seven cases of examination malpractice. Three from Central, two from Bono and two from Ashanti. So in total, we have seven.

Five of them were mobile phone infractions and two of them were preparing answers which they intended to, you know, distribute to their candidates in the examination halls," he explained.

He further explained that "three of them were not actively invigilating, but the other four were part of the invigilators."

Mr Kapi wondered why teachers keep involving themselves in such malpractices.

"It is something that is quite baffling, because several appeals have been made. WAEC has done its bit in some parts of the country.

Our regional representatives have held stakeholder engagements. They've spoken to teachers, spoken to chiefs, spoken to security personnel, spoken to PTAs, some sections of parents and so on. The Director General was very emphatic about the punishment that will be meted out to teachers who are involved.

The Minister of Education has stressed his, you know, abhorrence for examinational practice. So it baffles me, myself, and maybe many other people why these teachers will still want to get involved in this kind of, you know, situation," he bemoaned.

According to him, despite these incidents and a few challenges with distribution of examination questions, everything has gone on smoothly.

"We haven't had any incidents of candidates being denied the opportunity to write the examination. However, one of the major problems we had this morning was with the late arrival of examination material at the various examination centers, especially some parts of the Western Region," Mr Kapi said.

He assured that that "these are things that we probably will be able to correct as we move on with the exams in the subsequent days."