Imo State House of Assembly Wednesday faulted the N500, 000 penalty imposed on 266 private and public secondary schools in the state for alleged malpractices in  previous School Certificate Examinations (SCE).

The speaker, Kennedy Ibeh, first  drew the attention of the Deputy Registrar/ Zonal Coordinator, Imo and Abia states, Eddy Ayo Oluwafemi, to the  N500,000 fine on each of the indicted schools and made it clear that it was not captured anywhere in law or part of their extant law but was just a decision taken by the body’s  executive council which was itself an error.

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Uju Onwudiwe representing Njaba state constituency, who in their last sitting had moved the motion for the invitation of the zonal coordinator, added that even the N150,000  imposed on each of the schools to be paid for the engagement of external invigilators for two years was wrongly imposed because no incidence form was signed by any of the students caught in the alleged malpractices. 

She added that it was wrong for the teachers to be compelled to sign such undertaking and that 3 students out of 6 caught in malpractices could not be regarded as massive malpractice because 3 was not massive.

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Domnic Ezerioha of Oru west constituency requested from the WAEC representative if he knew of the existence of WAEC Act where penalties for different examination malpractices were captured and he said he didn’t know about it but that the executive council made up of relevant examination bodies imposed the fines and that the authorities of the schools and not the students, signed an undertaking which compelled WAEC to sanction the schools indicted in  the malpractices.