Opposition leader Raila Odinga claims the irregularities recorded in the recently released 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination results have roots deep in procurement tussles within the Education Ministry.

The results released by Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu on November 23 saw complaints over the misalignment of some candidates’ Kiswahili marks to Kenyan Sign Language, yet they did not take the latter subject.

There were also allegations that in a certain school, all candidates scored 75 marks in the science subject.

Addressing journalists in Nairobi on Wednesday, Odinga said in 2016, a UK firm was procured to print the exams after concerns about the integrity of the national exams.

He claims that with this year’s exam, however, the tender was suddenly terminated by the Kenya Kwanza government because the UK company refused to give kickbacks.

“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.

Saying “The integrity of our exams is under threat,” Odinga noted that they have evidence to substantiate his reports and that they have written to “stakeholders” to fight for the integrity of the examination.

He called for a thorough investigation into the award of the tender to the purported Mombasa Road-based company and demanded that Kenyans be told how the award was arrived at.

Following complaints on the KCPE results, the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) said that it had conducted a deep review and had found no signs of malpractice conducted by the institution where candidates are said to have received identical marks.

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

As for mark misalignment, the exam body has maintained that all results on its portal were accurate and that the errors only affected candidates who tried to access theirs through the 40054 SMS code.