A 30-year-old Ghanaian man could be jailed for up to five years after writing his wife’s paper in a science exam, police in the West African country said on Wednesday.

Kofi Ochere and his wife Christiana Yeboah, 28, a teacher, had both registered for the exam at the Presbyterian Secondary School in Legon, a suburb of the capital Accra.

But Ochere, who did not need the qualification, offered to write his wife’s paper while she wrote his.

“He feared the woman would not do well. But at the examination hall, they noted the paper had a feminine name,” police spokesman Beneso Darkwa said.

The two had been arrested while investigations continued.

“Both of them could go to jail … the maximum sentence is five years,” he said.

So far eight people had been arrested in Accra for pretending to be someone else during exams run by the West African Examinations Council for private secondary school candidates, Darkwa said.

Many pupils for private schools in Ghana are people who did not have an opportunity to go to school as children.

Wow. Good thing they don’t practice this in the states. I’ve helped folks get a leg up on some things and happily watched them thrive as a result. I don’t know if I considered it “cheating” as much as I did allowing them access. What they did after the fact to take fair advantage of the opportunity was on them. While helping some of them (my bad, Mel…I should have said, “while being of service to some of them”) who had hidden agendas did invariably bite me in the butt a few times, at least it wasn’t jail, just a lesson learned. Ghana needs to lighten up.

Science exam, a test of love