Police in Kampala have arrested the Director of Earnest Nursery and Primary School, who had been on the run for two years, over allegations of falsifying Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) results and certificates. Kampala Metropolitan Police Spokesperson, Patrick Onyango, identified the suspect as Ivan Wafula, aged 34, the director of Earnest Nursery and Primary School located in Kisugu Parish, Makindye Division, a suburb of Kampala City.
According to reports from Kabalagala Police Division, in 2020, Wafula allegedly registered Primary Seven candidates from his school for PLE and took them to an unknown location in Busia District, where they sat for exams purportedly administered by UNEB, but in fact conducted in an unidentified school.
After the alleged examinations, the pupils were returned to Kampala and handed over to their parents, awaiting results. Upon receipt, the suspect reportedly issued fake result slips and recommendations to the students. The students later joined various secondary schools using the allegedly falsified results.
However, in 2024, problems arose when the students were asked to produce their official PLE result slips, which they could not provide. Ebenezer Secondary School, one of the institutions attended by the affected students, requested the original PLE slips to register them for the Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) exams. When the students approached Wafula, he failed to produce the genuine documents.
“We asked four students who were due to sit for their Senior Four exams to provide their PLE result slips. When we checked them on the UNEB system, we discovered they belonged to other people. We involved the police, and it turned out the slips were fake, so we couldn’t register the students,” said John Pamba, Deputy Head Teacher of Ebenezer Secondary School.
Onyango said investigations revealed that the exams sat by the candidates were not genuine 2020 PLE papers, and Nanyuma Primary School in Busia District had no record of receiving candidates from Earnest Nursery and Primary School. Police recovered the forged documents and submitted them to UNEB for verification, which confirmed they were fake. Onyango added that Wafula had been evading arrest for two years before being captured from a hideout.
As the Primary Seven examinations approach, UNEB Spokesperson Jennifer Kalule on Monday urged parents and pupils to be vigilant about potential examination malpractices by unscrupulous schools. She cited previous cases where students failed to register for secondary-level exams due to forged results. According to the UNEB Act, any person found guilty of examination malpractice faces a fine not exceeding 20 million shillings, five years in prison, or both.
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