Karogo recalls fights, wins in Knec leadership

Education CS George Magoha (right) with former KNEC CEO Mercy Karogo at Ayany Estate Primary School, Kibra, Nairobi, 2019. [David Njaaga, Standard]

A few years back, national examination papers were being discretely hawked on the streets, with millions of shillings changing hands under a well-established criminal network.

When Mercy Karogo was posted to the Kenya National Examination Council in 2016, she met strong resistance.

The cartels that had perfected the distribution of leaked papers embarked on selling fake exams, alleging they were genuine. Ms Karogo’s duty was to wipe out the cartels involved in the underworld dealings that involved secondary principals, classroom teachers, parents and rogue council officials.

As 2022 starts, it will be a trying moment for David Njeng’ere as he takes over from Karogo. Before her entry at Knec, there were claims three cartons full of blank KCSE certificates disappeared from the council headquarters.

With no recovery made, Karogo said the suspicion had always been that they ended up at River Road in Nairobi, the home of fake academic certificates. “These are certificates with genuine serial numbers and a casual glance won’t tell they are fake. All that was needed was to insert names and anybody not verifying with Knec would never tell they were not genuine,” she said.

Ms Karogo added that in-depth investigations by the council exposed how millions of shillings were collected by cartels from private and public schools to facilitate the smuggling of examination papers from police stations and council rooms.

In some schools, examination papers were sneaked through the fence from where they were collected by subject teachers hours before the exam and candidates coached.

The leaked materials found their way from police stations where they were deposited for safe custody in readiness for the month-long exam.

Ms Karogo, now retired, says she implemented radical changes to transform the once scandal-ridden council. She said with help from insiders and high-ranking government officials led by then Education CS Fred Matiang’i and Prof George Magoha, she managed to seal the loopholes but created many enemies.

The new model included stationing exam safes in form of shipping containers at all sub-county offices. The keys to the containers would only be kept by a series of high-ranking education, administration and security personnel. Higher-ranking national officials would witness the opening of the containers in counties. In 2016, Dr Matiang’i kicked off the monitoring of the distribution of exam papers before 5am at Murang’a where he found a team led by John Elungata, now the Coast Regional Coordinator. 

Ms Karogo said exam systems are now intact for the future.

She said the council worked to reduce the exam marking period and have police officers man exam containers.

“To access the container, the sub-county director of education and the deputy county commissioner must open,” said Ms Karogo who retired last year.

The double locking system, she said, has helped to tame cartels as there is better scrutiny of those picking the papers and their details are recorded. The council reduced packing extra exam papers in the containers after the trend was viewed as an avenue for malpractice.

Ms Karogo said in her two years in office, DCI officers visited regularly to check certificates for persons applying for senior positions.

Prof Magoha, speaking in Murang’a last week, said the systems guarding the exam materials are intact.

“The cartels can continue with their business but there will be no leak,” Magoha said when he commissioned CBC classrooms at Gathinja, Gituto and Kahuhia schools last week.

University lecturer Charles Mwangi said exam integrity is reflected in the reduced cases of students switching programmes.

He said between 2010 and 2015, many students registered for medicine and engineering were switching to less demanding courses.