The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has discovered that 56 rogue website operators are responsible for leaked West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) papers. The head of the national office in Nigeria, Patrick Areghan, revealed this while monitoring the examination in some Government Secondary Schools.
The identified rogue website operators will face prosecution by the police in due course. According to Mr. Areghan, some supervisors are responsible for some examination malpractices. WAEC has a regulation to release papers to supervisors one hour before commencement time to enable them to move from the collection point to the administrative point, because of distances between schools. But in some cases, some supervisors snap the question papers and send them to their syndicate groups.
WAEC has put in place technology to detect any form of maleficence from any location. They have made a lot of arrests already in ongoing exams in various parts of the country. The arrested persons are illegal candidates, supervisors, heads of schools and others connected with malpractices.
Addressing journalists on the issue, Mr. Areghan stated that supervisors were the council’s problem. “Supervisors are our problems, they make a lot of money from this. The exam is taking place in over 21,000 secondary schools in Nigeria with only 2,000 staff strength, how many centers are we going to man?” he asked.
Mr. Areghan in his plea called on candidates, teachers, and parents to maintain the ethics of examination as the fight against examination malpractice requires all hands on deck to restore credibility.
Meanwhile, the WAEC board chair, Binta Abdulkadri, expressed concern about the involvement of school principals in exam malpractice. Ms. Abdulkadri, who is also the Director, Senior Secondary Education, Federal Ministry of Education, commended the council for the deployment of technology to nab the culprits of exam malpractice.
The principal of Government Secondary School, Kubwa, Musa Zuru, commended the progress made by WAEC, adding that schools in the FCT operate zero tolerance for examination malpractice, urging other schools to follow suit.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that 1,621,895 candidates are sitting for the WASSCE examinations across the country in over 21,000 secondary schools.
WAEC also reminds everyone to make sure they abide by Facebook’s policies on the reporting of suicide and self-harm, which prohibit the sharing or promotion of messages related to suicide or self-harm.
