Follow @9jaLife NO fewer than 22 more Ogun State civil servants were Thursday arrested and interrogated by officials of the Criminal Investigations Department of the state Police Command in Abeokuta over their alleged involvement in the N200 million West African Examination Council (WAEC) fees' fraud. Those questioned were officials of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology among whom were some Zonal Education Officers (ZEOs). As at the time of filing this report, the suspects were still being interrogated, so it was not clear whether they would be detained after their interrogation or not. But four top officials in the ministry, two of whom were said to be directors, had been detained at the Police Command headquarters, Eleweran, since Monday for their alleged involvement in the crime. The suspects are being interrogated for being members of a syndicate that had, in the past three years, swindled the state government of N200 million through the payment of WAEC fees for secondary school students. As part of its free education policy, the government pays the WAEC fees for all secondary school students in the state whose number is put at thousands. Police investigations have so far revealed that the fraud was perpetrated through inflation of list of WAEC candidates in public schools by adding the names of candidates in private schools or tutorial centres. The crime was said to have been committed by the suspects, with the connivance of some private school proprietors. The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Mr. Olusegun Odubela, while answering a reporter's question on the issue, stated that he was yet to get full details about the fraud but urged members of the public to furnish the Police with the necessary information that would assist them to unravel all those behind the fraud and the actual amount involved. He, however, confirmed that all those implicated during the ministry's preliminary investigations have been handed over to the Police, adding: "I promise that I will not hesitate to hand over others that are found culpable in the alleged fraud". Odubela added that the state government would not fold its arms and allow such dastardly act to continue, assuring that the outcome from the [...]
