As exams and Safaricom scams defraud Kenyans, where is Aaron Ringera?

The bandit government of Kenya is abetting crime and profound theft of public resources as well as destruction of the lives of our future generations. In this regard, the peoples' president and Prime Minister should not be in a hurry to be sworn in because he will be complicit in the illegalities of the state and what is more he will be bogged down by collective irresponsibility.

May be it is time we Kenyans took stock of the actions of some pivotal bandits in PNU, notably George Muthengi Kinuthia ole (sic) Saitoti. The second man we need to train our binoculars on is Amos Kimunya, the youthful and liquid minister for finance. Above all, Kenyans need to ask unassuming questions such as when exam scandals were revealed the other day and while we all know including the illiterate Wanjiku, that the Safaricom IPO is an an overboard deal, one man remains handsomely remunerated in Kenya.

Justice (is he really retired) Aaron Ringera may be remembered by Kenyans for mouthy and pompous vocabulary and his well cut suits than we will ever size him up for the 2.5 million pay check that he draws monthly for nothing more than chasing around small fry and defeated former parliamentarians who inflated their mileage claims. Again, it is not all MPs. He has a knack for cracking the whip on dry economic bones while letting the grand thieves in the grand thieving PNU go scot free. Where is Aaron Ringera, the inept head of the state anti-graft agency?

The Kenya National Examinations Council was caught pants down practising waht coward-in-chief Samuel Kivuitu did to hand over illegal power to bandit president Mwai Kibaki. Kivuitu extended Safaricom's top-up, handing Kibaki manufactured 1m votes to lipfrog the peoples' president Raila Odinga. The KNEC topped-up exam results for some students from PNU-positive zones. What is ridiculous is that as was the case with the Kivuitu top-up, the goons at the center of the KNEC top-up missed the point and even handed ghost candidates impressive exam performances which means they can go ahead and study medicine or law. We complained about it here, now it is a national disgrace. But what has Aaron Ringera done, in spite of his enormous statutory powers? NOTHING, na Kenyans muta do?

The election was stolen. Kenyans turned out in record numbers to bundle out an insensitive regime bent on clinging to illicit power and which was implicated in mega corruption scandals. The goons at the ECK went on an extra-ordinary rigging spree, even handing constituencies like Mathira a voting impossibility with a bloated turn-out of the absurd and ridiculous 115%. Aaron Ringera is yet to ask Kivuitu to record a statement. He won't, because he is PNU-positive and it is only former Kanu operatives who have fallen out of favor with Warlord-in-chief Uhuru Kenyatta that need to be haunted to submission. Aaron Ringera speaks big and farts big, and that is all. He farts with his mouth, empty words but a lot of pungent gasses that look misty with nothing substantive in it. The elction was stolen, na muta do?

Now on to Safaricom, the IPO of a life time. Safaricom is a company that is supposed to be owned by the Kenya government and Vodafone (K) Ltd. The shareholding is 60:40, quite innocuous and innovative. Vodafone is the leading mobile phone service provider in the world. Interestingly, Kenyans did not know something else. By law, Vodafone was only entitled to some 30% shareholding in a Kenyan company. Well it owns exactly that! So what is the noise all about?

Look at the contradiction. Where is Vodafone's other 10%, that makes it own 40% of Safaricom? Now it turns out that Mobitelea Ventures, is an acronym for Moi Biwott Telecoms East Africa. It is registered offshore in circumstances that leave you and I speculating till death. The Guardian newspaper fo UK found out that Mobitelea was registered in Guernsey on June 18, 1999 - several months after Vodafone had struck a preliminary deal with the Kenyan government. Mobitelea's real owners are hidden behind two nominee firms, Guernsey-registered Mercator Nominees Ltd and Mercator Trustees Ltd. The directors are named as Anson Ltd and Cabot Ltd, based in Anguilla and Antigua.

Smart fools. The red flag has always been raised regarding the faceless individuals behind Mobitelea, including an expose by the Mar Group. Nothing has startled Aaron Ringera so far. No, he smells no fishy deal. Talking of fish. Mr Amos Kimunya has presided over the treasury at a time when the economic sector in Kenya was tribalized and trivialized. From irregularly helping mask the faceless goons behind a substantial acquisition of Equity by an alleged Nigerian investor, which boils down to the bandits at SH, to illegally authorizing the sale of the Safaricom shares at the super diluted price of 5 bob/ share at the IPO, it is evident that Kimunya is scandalous. Key analysts of the stock markets are wondering why the artificial undervaluing of the Safaricom issue at 5-bob when recent issues like Mumias were priced at over 10-bob. Is kobole really Safaricom's worth? Some observers opine that the kobole is meant to be the lowest, which will induce weaker investors to offload their shares at the NSE once floated on May 30, 2008 if the demand and prices climb. Ideally, once the prices sky-rocket to say 100-bob, some investors will be keen to offload, meaning the shenanigans are waiting to up the ante and increase their share-holding through the NSE in what is on the surface legit. Kenyans, muta do?

Recently key players at the NSE namely Nyagah and Francis Thuo stock brokers either went under or are under statutory management. Kenyans would like to know how long it took the regulator, Capital Markets Authority (CMA) to see it coming and why the NSE was reported to have loaned out a cool 100million shillings to a sinking venture. Well, you need to see the surnames of the principals in the two rogue NSE dealers to understand why Kimunya is culpable. Aaron Ringera has not moved on the illegal activities. Kenyans, muta do? There are more reasons than one why the IPO should not be allowed to go on. The privatization of state corporations needs to be carried out by a commission which was established under a relevant Privatization Act. Mr Kimunya, in his Jua Kali way of fiscal management, is yet to operationalize the Act which denies Kenyans the transparency that such a massive investment requires. Furthermore, the collapsed rogue brokers sunk with millions of shillings belonging to prospective investors who will be disenfranchized. It is immoral to proceed with the IPO without Kenyans, any sector of Kenyans. Where is Ringera, na Kenyans muta do?

Looking at the exam scandals and the economic rape that Kenyans are paying for, one name keeps popping up like a cancerous tumor. Professor George Saitoti, the crane-necked minister in charge of police genocide and brutality is synonymous with the Goldenberg scandals, exam cheating and police scams. Why has Aaron Ringera not moved on him? With all these reports of scam after scam, what does Ringera's radar await, surely? Does he need to be visited in the dead of the night by a night runner and informed that Mr Wasanga of KNEC should have recorded a statement with his office the moment there was any hint of impropriety? Should he be taught what earning 100-fold the salary of a high school teacher who breaks his back in 40 lessons a week means? He has a job description, but annual reviews tell us that his performance is not commensurate with the perks. He is abdicating his responsibilities. He should have no job now and not in the future either.

But one question remains unanswered. While Kenyans grope in the darkness for answers to a number of questions and more remarkably the exam scandals and the Safaricom IPO where are the state graft agencies? Where is the one man who will likely be remembered for farting loud and doing nothing about corruption. Where is the Right Hon Justice Aaron Ringera? And why do we still need to pay him to fart on his cozzy swing chairs while the corruption lords run away with our little cake? Why?

Kenya elections whistleblower in flight

He could easily pass as one of the many junior and mid-career African students braving the winter cold and rushing through classes at a prestigious institute in The Netherlands. His calm demeanor and quiet exterior belie the inner turmoil and tension of a man forced to abandon his family, friends and career and flee to a foreign land in fear of his life. Still, his eyes have that earnest look that attests to his bravery and determination to speak out in the face of what he terms blatant injustice and outright violation of the will of a majority of his fellow countrymen and women.

The Institute that has for the last 50 years trained thousands of development-oriented professionals, scholars and practitioners from the developing world has been his temporary refuge for almost three months now since he fled Nairobi in early January. He is completing a three-month course on human rights, at the end of which he will have to look for a new place to call home. Such has been his rootless existence since he made that singly bold stand on the evening of 30 December 2007 to speak out on national and international television about the fiasco that was the tallying process at the Electoral Commission of Kenya. He immediately had to go into hiding, moving only in the cover of darkness or hidden in anonymous cars with tinted windows as he sought refuge. At the time, the entire country was gripped with tension and fear.

I first met Mr. Kirui in 1987 when we were both students at Kapsabet Boys High school in the then larger Nandi District to the west of Kenya’s Rift Valley. He was my senior in A level, quiet, unassuming and down to earth. We struck up a cordial though not particularly close friendship. We shared a common heritage, coming from a humble rural background. As first-born boys in typical African families, we both felt the weight of responsibility, not only to excel in school, but also to set a good example for those to follow. We were expected to assume responsibility for our younger siblings and were instilled with a strong sense of purpose, ambition and discipline. Little did I know that after completion of his A level studies; I would neither see nor hear from him again until more than ten years later.

Like many motivated Kenyan students unable to afford a more expensive and prestigious university education in Europe or America, Mr. Kirui turned east and enrolled in a law degree at Bangalore University in India in 1991. The defining moment in his life came when he met a member of the Indian state legislative assembly and an advocate. Mr. M. V. Rajashekaran became his mentor and introduced him to the world of legislative law and practice. Mr. Rajashekaran had a profound influence on Mr. Kirui’s career choice after graduation two years later in 1996. While working as an intern at Mr. Rajashekaran’s office, he was struck by how the Indian state legislatures were performing: “quite efficient and democratic, with high-quality staffing and facilities and good working conditions,” marvels Mr. Kirui.

It was then that he decided to focus on legislative work, as opposed to the traditional core legal training. Upon his return to Kenya in 1998, Mr. Kirui embarked on a journey that would see him rise quickly as a well-respected and accomplished parliamentary official. He became one of a handful of experts in the details of parliamentary rules and procedure working in Kenya today. While at the Kenya School of Law, he became interested in the research capacity of members of parliament and sought to find out whether parliament provided resources and research capability for MPs to do their work effectively. He then sought a research permit from the office of the president to study the Kenyan parliament.

This was an unusual request at the time, since no member of the public, not even former MPs, were allowed into the parliament’s library. The serious lacunae in research and law-making capacity soon became obvious to Mr. Kirui. He made it his life mission to seek every opportunity to assist in improving the quality of parliamentary work by providing expert support for members of parliament and parliamentary staff. In his determination, he decided to double as a parliamentary commentator for Kenya Times newspaper and, in the year 2000, started a parliamentary political talk show on Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation TV. “At the time it was very difficult to allow MPs to appear on shows on KBC,” Mr. Kirui admits.

“I convinced the minister who was then Hon. Joe Nyaga that it was possible to have a TV show with politicians coming in to talk about what’s going on in Parliament.” This was a significant historical moment in the country’s political process. The country was gearing itself for the decisive 2002 elections. Civil society involvement in the political process was at its peak, and Mr. Kirui’s passion for bridging the gap between parliamentary processes and the public found fertile ground. He started supporting civil society organisations and donor agencies involved in electoral, governance and, in particular, legislative issues. As a result, he worked with such organisations as the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and USAID, among others. After the opposition victory in the 2002 elections and the subsequent cooption of hitherto critical sections of civil society in government, Mr. Kirui turned his attention to consulting for interest groups and stakeholders lobbying parliament on specific bills before the house.

“Many of them would like to understand the implications of the legislation, participate in the law making process and lobby to ensure their interests were protected,” Mr. Kirui admitted. As his involvement in parliamentary procedures deepened and his involvement with a cross-section of influential sections of society widened, he steadily gained respect from all interested parties in the parliamentary process. Mr. Kirui contributed in varying degrees to landmark bills that later became key pieces of legislation in Kenya, such as the Central Bank of Kenya Amendment Bill (Donde Bill), the Industrial Property Bill on issues relating to access to essential medicines and the Tobacco Control Bill. He also worked with the Association of Kenya Insurers and other stakeholders.

“Through all this, my experience was to ask, do we have sufficient capacity for the public, the common people to get to know what law is being enacted? Are they participating? I am a believer in public participation in law-making. I do not believe that people just assume that MPs, the elected representatives should carry out house processes without consultation or reference to the public,” he asserts.It was in recognition of his expert knowledge of parliamentary procedure, his dedication and unparalleled commitment to the legislative process that, in 2003, the Parliamentary Services Commission invited him to apply for a position as a fulltime member of staff. It was none less than Hon. Oloo Aringo, the architect of the PSC who extended the invitation.

Although at the time Mr. Kirui had just been appointed to a lucrative position as deputy country director for a USAID parliamentary assistance programme run by the State University of New York, he chose the less glamorous path to join the public service as a clerk of parliament. “I abandoned the USAID project and with it a very lucrative job, but I have never regretted my decision,” he states confidently. Owing to his extensive experience, determination and strong work ethic, he quickly rose through the ranks to become the first staff member in the history of parliament to be posted to the chamber before confirmation. While probation in the civil service takes two years, and promotion to the chamber, a process called ‘robing’ in parliament, takes up to ten years for other staff, Mr. Kirui was robed within a year.

It was his secondment to the Electoral Commission of Kenya as a tallying supervisor that set the stage that propelled Mr. Kirui to the centre of the intrigue, manipulation and mayhem that bedeviled the critical final steps of the electoral process in Kenya. As a tallying supervisor, Mr. Kirui was responsible for the vote tallying process for one of ten regions comprised of 21 constituencies. This involved supervising junior staff who were meant to be in direct contact with returning officers at the constituency level, to receive and tally poll results by phone, verify them via faxed copies of original documents and finally confirm them by receiving the actual physical copies of original documents (form 16) countersigned by presiding officers and polling agents at the polling stations before the results could be announced by the commission chairman.

What transpired however, according to Mr. Kirui was utter confusion, a breach of the laid down procedures, complete disregard of the need for verification and proper and accurate documentation of the results and what appeared to be a deliberate manipulation of the entire process. It now emerges that none of the tallying and data entry officials recruited by the Electoral Commission received adequate training if at all on how to handle the exercise. Mr. Kirui insists that the recruitment exercise continued to the very day of the election and at the very last minute, people were literally being recruited from the streets.

“They had school leavers from the streets joining the ECK tallying teams. I thought it was questionable, not because they didn’t know what to do, but because they came very late, totally untrained and unprepared. We were then as team leaders asked to train people, yet we didn’t receive any training ourselves.” The Independent Review Committee into the conduct of the elections, according to Mr. Kirui needs to focus in part on structural weaknesses in the ECK that led to such a high level of incompetence of those who were handling the tallying of the results. “The level of incompetence right from the junior officers picked from the streets and put to the job right away, seeing the forms and documents for the first time, without any training, to the highest officials and supervisors who seemed not to understand their roles and duties.”

He adds,” The lack of organisation and lack of training was not just a failure to plan; it was deliberate to create chaos and confusion so it could be easy to manipulate the process.”It was these glaring systemic weaknesses that allowed the process to be flawed, as well as deliberate manipulation of the tallying process that led Mr. Kirui to leave the ECK tallying centre and speak to the press just hours before the presidential results were announced and Mr. Kibaki sworn in as president. Knowing full well the repercussions of his actions, despite the real fear that it could well cost him his life, Mr. Kirui chose to go public.

“The reason I went public was because of what I saw in Rwanda. The consequence of denying and robbing the people of their basic democratic rights, against a situation where you have skeletons of thousands of people buried in one grave. At some stage, I saw the skeleton of a baby, almost 40cm, with diapers still on and the skull had a big hole in it…you ask yourself how and why that level of animal behaviour could happen. I saw our country sliding down that road and I knew I had to do something to prevent that slide, the certain and horrifying prospect of the consequence of a presidency being snatched from a winner. I could see that the country was already in a tense trance. I thought we were getting drunk, and I could see a slaughter and serious massacres 40 or so hours later.

It could have been worse.”In his zeal to try and forestall what he thought was a national catastrophe looming over the land, Mr. Kirui faced the press and made his now famous speech. “It mattered to me that my coming out would make a difference and I am convinced that it did. When I went to KICC to address the press, the situation was already tense; the paramilitary police GSU had surrounded the place. I was sure a bullet would go through my head any time. I believed my intervention would save the situation. I thought Mr. Kivuitu would announce that the elections are nullified, that he would order a recount, or that we would have another election in 12 months or so. I was convinced some action would be taken; little did I know that Mr. Kibaki was preparing to be sworn in at the same time. I thought I was acting at the nick of time.Instead, from then on, Mr. Kirui was a marked man on the run. I hadn’t seen or been in touch with him since the year 2000.

I had been living in Holland since 2001, but happened to be in Kenya at the time. Two days after his press appearance, Mr. Kirui called me in the dead of night. I could tell he was clearly shaken and scared. He confessed to needing any help he could get to leave the country asked if I had any contacts with any foreign embassy that might be willing to help. I made some phone calls and put him in touch with an embassy official I knew, and so begun his extraordinary flight through Tanzania to the Netherlands. It was not as easy to leave Nairobi. His two daughters aged ten and twelve were up country in the village visiting their grandparents.

His wife could not immediately leave with him as she had to fetch the girls from the village. He worried silently about leaving them behind, but knew he would be no use to them at home and dead; he had to go ahead and was comforted by the assurance that they would join him soon. According to him, many friends in the NGO sector and more than one foreign mission came to his rescue, first hiding him in an ambassadorial residence after another, then being driven in cars with tinted windows across town to record his statement and swear an affidavit before a commissioner for oaths and eventually planning an escape route.

By then, his contacts in the police and the National Security Intelligence Service had warned him that certain sections of the police were hunting him down and that his best hope was to leave the country. Some diplomats suggested leaving through Sudan, but the national airspace was under tight surveillance then and small aircraft flights from every single airstrip in the country were grounded. The only option was to leave by road. Uganda was at the time suspected to be supporting Mr. Kibaki. That left Tanzania as the least risky of the available options. What followed was a harrowing, eighteen-hour drive from Nairobi under the cover of darkness and disguise, through Namanga border, via Arusha, to Dar es Salaam.

A week after he went underground, he was finally able to breathe a little air of freedom, but sadly, not in his own country. His well-wishers in Kenya immediately organised an air ticket for him and, after being holed up in an embassy in Dar es Salaam, he was driven straight to Mwalimu Julius Nyerere International Airport, from which he took an overnight flight to relative safety in Amsterdam. When he landed at Schiphol airport, the director of the Institute that was to host him was ready to receive him. A place had been secured for him to enroll straight away as a student in a human rights certificate program.

The diplomatic community in The Hague gave him a warm welcome, especially those who had had any contact with or field experience in Kenya. Most of them were eager to hear his first-hand experiences. These discussions served to embolden the Dutch Foreign ministry’s and, by extension, the European Union’s strong policy position during the negotiation process that Kofi Annan mediated. At the time of this interview, Mr. Kirui was completing the final papers for his course and intended to leave the Netherlands shortly, bound for a new destination (which shall remain undisclosed for the sake of his safety and that of his family).

He still fears for his life and is not assured that he can be guaranteed adequate security in Kenya. His informants in the police force and NSIS maintain that his life is still in danger. Contrary to popular opinion, the opposition leadership was not involved at all in his flight and had no idea of his whereabouts, even weeks after his departure. According to him, “I wouldn’t rely on protection from politicians; I didn’t go public because of politicians. It was my conscience. Who would ensure my security in Nairobi? The government has no control over and has been alleged to lend support to Mungiki. Two members of parliament were killed like dogs in the streets, who am I to survive?”Asked about the witness protection act that was passed during his time as clerk at the national assembly, Mr. Kirui dismisses it as one of the weakest pieces of legislation ever passed by parliament, having been watered down by MPs, who, through their selfish and shortsighted considerations, failed the nation yet again.

The Independent Review Committee on the election debacle will thus have to do without his testimony, at least in person, unless they are able to arrange a videoconference, or accept a signed statement from Mr. Kirui. Asked about his future, Mr. Kirui says he will not depart from his career in legislative issues, but wants to continue doing rigorous research, publishing and building a critical body of knowledge that he thinks is needed in order to improve legislative processes in Africa, and particularly in Eastern Africa, including Kenya. That will be his contribution for the foreseeable future. For now, Kenya’s parliament will have to do without his skills and expertise at a time when perhaps it needs him.

Students awarded grades for exams they never sat

Story by KENNETH OGOSIA Publication Date: 3/24/2008

Some students who did not sit last year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination were awarded impressive mean grades, the Nation has learnt. The principal of Thurdibuoro Secondary school in Nyando District, Mr Alfred Ochiel, said one of his students who did not attempt the exams was graded. “This candidate in my school abandoned the exams midway. Normally, such candidates are not graded but KNEC decided to give him a D+,” he said. Teachers interviewed who did not want their names mentioned said they knew of a student in a city school who was awarded A- mean grade though he did not sit the exam. Another candidate in the city who was disqualified after being caught cheating was later given a B+ score by the examination council. The outcry over the integrity of the examination council compelled Education minister Sam Ongeri to form a 15 member committee chaired by Kenyatta University vice-chancellor Oliver Mugenda to investigate the results. In Rongo, a candidate who was expelled from school and did not turn up for the exams was awarded an A-. His head teacher was shocked to learn that the boy had “passed” so highly. Education PS Karega Mutahi has downplayed the gravity of the matter. Knec secretary Paul Wasanga said the anomalies will be part of the investigations. He said the team should be given a chance to unearth the details about the computer error or any other cause of the cheating”. Mr Wasanga said with 276,000 candidates, each sitting 22 papers, such mistakes were bound to happen and if discovered the matter will be dealt with accordingly. He said results for candidates who did not sit exams could have been released if other students erred by shading wrong index numbers. However, the examinations chief said he could not rule out anomalies. Mr Wasanga accused some principals of malice for “releasing result slips to the wrong hands and then turning to condemn Knec which they form part of as de facto officials.” He said some candidates could have forgotten their index numbers and marked wrong ones therefore enabling the computer memory to produce results in the programmed formula. He explained that the committee would investigate in detail the errors because in some instances, candidates who sat half the exams or did not complete due to unknown reasons also got results. A principal said one set of results was given in February and another one in March when those who did not sit exams were awarded mean grades. Kenya Post Primary Education Teachers Union secretary general Wanyonyi Buteyo said they would move to court to have the council dissolved because it had compromised the integrity of the country’s academic standards and certificates. Mr Buteyo said the minister was delaying justice but forming a probe committee in a clear case of incompetence.

Shocking revelations on KCSE fiasco

We have been asking the question of the validity of the 2007 KCSE results. Now the country is getting revelations of more irregularities. Read on

By Lillian Aluanga

Last year’s Form Four candidates could have another shocker coming their way because the new pecking order drawn by the national examinations body has even more relegations and surprises.

The "slight adjustments" for which Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) recalled the results of 4,438 candidates will see some schools fall back by as many as six slots from the position read by Education minister last month. The shocker awaiting parents and schools is contained in a second quietly revised KNEC list released to a handful of leading players in the education sector. It shows a remarkable decline in the fortunes of some schools that enjoy a national profile.

In some cases, however, some schools could come out better.

In the new list, which has the first 102 names, St Paul Secondary — which was in position 83 in the statement read out by the minister last month — does not feature at all. St Patrick Iten moves up from 82 to 69, while Chemelil Sugar slides from 69 to 74.

In the results released on February 28, Busara was number 40. In the revised ranking, done on March 7, a week after the results were released, Busara drops more than 20 places. As a result of this it loses its place in the top 50 and lands at position 61. In the new ranking, Busara’s performance index drops from 9.4347 to 8.8695.

Kabarak High School has moved from position 51 in the February list to 47.

Although Mangu High School remains at the top even in the new ranking, its performance index shifts slightly from 11.2634 to 11.2097.

But even the idea of a school with more than 100 candidates posting a mean score of 11 has stirred interest.

According to the new list, Loreto High School, Limuru, moves up to position three from four. Precious Blood Riruta, which was ranked third on February 28, is now fourth in the new list.

Maseno School now moves into the top 10 bracket after the revision of the results, up from number 11 nationally.

In the new ranking Sunshine Secondary School exits from its ninth position nationally to 11. Initially placed at position 50 with a mean score of 9.2555, Bura Girls’ High School in Taita Taveta District has moved up to 46.

But even as it shot up, its mean score dropped from 9.2555 in February to 9.1222.

Results recalled

In Taita Taveta District alone, at least 30 out of 43 secondary schools results were recalled.

Seasoned teachers from top performing schools yesterday widely conceded that never in their lifetime had they seen results being recalled or rankings revised.

A section of head teachers and parents angered by the bungled exam results have vowed to go full throttle to get to the bottom of the matter.

The new list was drawn before the constitution of a probe team, to "look into questions and concerns raised over the 2007 results" by Education minister Prof Sam Ongeri this week.

Students of Bahati Girls’ School , Nakuru, celebrated the KCSE results with joy when they were first released. Tables have turned and they have been dropped from position 14 to 17.

"The anomaly experienced in processing the mean grades in this year’s KCSE was highly regretted," said the ministry in an advertisement signed by KNEC chairman Prof Raphael M Munavu.

The ministry maintains the flawed results were as a result of a ‘computer error’, but the problem is limited to mean grade calculation. Kenyatta University Vice Chancellor Prof Olive Mugendi heads the probe team.

The attack on the integrity of Kenya’s exams, curiously in the environment of an equally flawed election process, has already been criticised by school heads. They want an independent body to oversee the remarking.

The minister, however, says the argument "defies logic", because it affects only 0.6 per cent of the candidates who sat the exams.

Some schools have threatened to go to court to seek orders for the review of the original papers written and submitted by candidates.

Parents at Friends School, Kamusinga, where the results of at least 30 students were affected, have set up a committee to draw up a suit. The school registered a massive drop in all subjects and was ranked at position 29. Friends School has been in the top-10 bracket for the past three years.

Maseno School is not celebrating even after moving to position 10. Instead, the school’s board is preparing to go to court and demand a remarking of two subjects.

"It is simply not possible for a school to drop in all subjects at once given that they had the same teachers. We are going to court and want to see the original scripts, the marking and how the averages were arrived at," said a parent at Kamusinga School.

In Maseno, the board detected a pattern where students who got A in English ended up with A- in either Kiswahili or Maths.

Another head teacher from Nyanza Province said exam cheating is on the rise and the ministry’s handling of the issue is disappointing.

"The process of marking exams is clear and rigorous. The manipulation of results could only have been done within KNEC’s higher ranks, long after the examiners had done their work," the principal said.

Cheating rampant

He added: "I have never heard of any place in the world where exam results have been recalled. KNEC has broken the record."

The principal said it was "unusual and has never happened" that in a school with more than 100 candidates, the lowest has a B+.

The law of "natural distribution", the principal said, does not allow for a school with more than 100 candidates to get a mean score of 11.00.

Even more unsettling are unconfirmed reports of the lengths to which some head teachers went in colluding with their students to ensure they were among the top schools.

In one school not more than 30km from Nairobi, several Form Two students are said to have spent a night at a hotel delivering answers to the exam questions.

In yet another school, Form Four students were reportedly asked to buy cell phones, which were to be used to relay answers.

"Exams are the culmination of the whole delivery of learning and teaching. If professionalism isn’t embraced and seen to be practicsed in the way examinations are handled then everything is wasted," says Mr Christopher Khaemba, the outgoing Alliance High School principal.

Results of at least 30 students at the school were affected.

Khaemba said since the ministry had already taken a stand on the issue, an independent commission should be set up to find out what really happened to last year’s examination results, which he describes as "extremely random".

Khaemba points out at several issues that he says are highly unusual of examination results. He cites the example of Limuru Girls’ which has more than 119 A’s in Mathematics and only 19 A’s in English.

"I haven’t seen this before. I don’t know how it is possible for the same students to score that many A’s in Mathematics and perform so poorly in English. After all, girls are known to do well in languages," he said.

Several head teachers in Western and Nyanza provinces are also calling for remarking of the exams to get a true reflection of the results.

A head teacher in western Kenya says most schools in the region were affected. He says something about last year’s exam results does not add up.

He too says the ‘randomness’ in this year’s results says a lot more than meets the eye and that it is misleading to blame the anomalies on a ‘computer error’ alone.

"We have prepared these students for a long time and know what they are capable of doing," he said.

"I have been in this profession for many years and have a general idea of the trends. This year’s results were not reflective of the students abilities and it is clear there was deliberate tampering," he added.

He cited the example of a school, which traditionally has its index 1-10 students scoring straight A’s but had at least five of its top students this year scoring lower grades.

The head teacher is incensed by what he calls the ministry’s "trivialisation" of the issue by saying that the number of students affected was negligible.

"The anomaly should never have happened. The Education minister doesn’t know what he is talking about. He wasn’t even the one in office when all this was happening. How can he possibly explain what happened?" he posed.

"How is it possible that a school shoots up more than 50 places at once? The move is usually progressive, when a school is either coming up or dropping," he says.

The head teacher said more than 20 students in his school were affected by the anomaly. He suggests that examiners should be recalled to cross check last year’s results.

He said concerns raised by some examiners over what they perceived to be cases of cheating were not taken seriously.

"I know there were some examiners who raised concern over cases of cheating that had been detected among some schools but these reports seem to have been ignored," the head teacher says.

"The examiners know which schools cheated. They should be recalled to come and help resolve this issue," he says.

Friends School principal, Mr Simon Nabukhwesi, who is also the Western School Heads Association chairman, says urgent measures must be taken to curb cheating in national examinations.

"Let us have these examination papers coming in complete with pictures of the candidates and details such as the index numbers printed on every page," he says.

This, he says, would reduce cases of having extra copies, which have often found their way into wrong hands.

But even as pressure mounts on the Kenya National Examinations Council over last year’s KCSE results debacle, Prof Ongeri appears to suggest that the matter is being ‘blown out of proportion’.

The minister has already ruled out remarking of the exam saying the number of candidates affected was ‘negligible’.

At least 4,000 out of 276,000 candidates were affected.

"Results released by the minister are always provisional, giving room for correction and complaints within 30 days. We registered a 99.4 per cent success rate. The error did not affect subjects, but aggregates so resitting, remarking or cancelling the examinations is null and void," Ongeri said.

Also adding its voice to the exam results fiasco is the Orange Democratic Movement parliamentary group, which dismissed the team set up by Ongeri to probe the matter.

The parliamentary group said the team cannot be trusted to carry out an inquiry and demanded that an independent body be established to work with the police in getting to the bottom of the matter.

The 15-member team has 18 days to carry out investigations and present the report to Ongeri. KNEC has also given all schools and candidates up to April 30 to raise any other questions associated with the 2007 KCSE results.

Khaemba suggests the establishment of parallel examining bodies of high standing as one way of improving the credibility of national examinations.

"We can have competing examination bodies as is the case in other countries like the UK, where you have exams administered by Oxford or Cambridge, and then allow the schools to choose," he says.

The outgoing head wonders why mock exams done at the district and provincial level do not record glaring irregularities like those seen in the national exam.

"We now have provincial and district examinations being handled better than national one. How is this possible?" Khaemba poses.

"If the Government is willing to spare resources, the remarking can be done. The scripts are still there. All it needs is to set some time aside, say in April, and then remark the exam," he says.