The leader of the opposition, Raila Odinga, asserts that the anomalies observed in the recently published results of the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination arise from internal disputes over procurement within the Education Ministry.

Concerns were raised about several candidates’ Kiswahili marks not matching up with their Kenyan Sign Language scores in the results that Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu revealed on November 23. However, the candidates did not take the latter course.

Additionally, there were claims that all applicants at a particular school had a science grade of 75.

Speaking to journalists in Nairobi on Wednesday, Odinga stated that worries over the integrity of the national examinations led to the 2016 procurement of a UK company to print the exams.

He asserts that the Kenya Kwanza administration abruptly cancelled the deal after this year’s exam because the UK business declined to provide bribes.

“The Kenya Kwanza administration awarded the contract to a Mombasa Road-based company. It did not have the capacity and could not assure the integrity of the exams. The Mombasa Road-based company outsourced to a company based in India,” he said.

The opposition leader argues that this led to the mess-up witnessed.

“Some of them in the (SMS) short code were different from what was in the schools. KNEC is calling it non-alignment. KCPE candidates were graded for an exam they did not sit,” Odinga said.

“The mess with KCPE began with a tender war.  Ministry of Education officials were against each other. It has messed up the KCPE and will likely impact KCSE,” he added, referring to the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations.

Declaring, “The integrity of our exams is under threat,” Odinga said that they had written to “stakeholders” to defend the integrity of the exam and that they have proof to support his allegations.

He urged that Kenyans be informed of the process used to determine the tender award to the alleged Mombasa Road-based business and he called for a thorough probe into the matter.

In response to concerns over the KCPE results, the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) announced that it had carried out a thorough investigation and had discovered no evidence of misconduct on the part of the organization where it is claimed that applicants obtained similar scores.

In a message to newsrooms, KNEC CEO Dr. David Njengere said, “Science is a multiple-choice question paper, thus making it possible for the candidates to get identical marks.”

Regarding mark misalignment, the exam body has insisted that all results on its website are true and that the mistakes only impacted applicants who attempted to view their results by using the 40054 SMS number.