The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has identified 56 rogue website operators that leaked its West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (WASSCE).
The Head of the council’s National Office in Nigeria (HNO), Mr. Patrick Areghan, announced this yesterday in Abuja while monitoring the examination in some government secondary schools.
Areghan said the identified rogue website operators would be prosecuted by the police in due course.
According to him, some dubious supervisors are responsible for some of the malpractices that occurred during the council’s examinations.
“We have a regulation to release papers to supervisors one hour before commencement time, to enable them go from collection point to the administrative point, because of distance in some schools.
“But what they do is to snap the question papers and send to their syndicate groups. You now begin to ask questions about what they are trying to achieve with it.
“Candidates are already in the exam hall and you are posting the questions. Sometimes, they change the front of the questions and add 2023 for exam questions of 2020.
“Some gullible parents and students will go for it and destroy themselves because there is no way they can get our questions,” he said.
The WAEC HNO said the council had put in place modern technology to detect any form of maleficence from any location.
“I am happy to announce that so far in this exam, we have made a lot of arrests. We made arrests in Ibadan (Oyo), Maiduguri (Borno), Abeokuta (Ogun), Osogbo (Osun), Umuahia (Abia) and many other states.
“In all, we have made arrests of no fewer than 15 persons, comprising candidates, supervisors, school proprietor and others connected with the malpractices.
“Supervisor 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 centres are we going to man?” he queried.
“These supervisors are teachers given to us by state ministries of education, and when they come, they make it a business.
“We are not in control of social media. Small boys post questions for advertisement and ask candidates to subscribe on their websites and then they give them fake questions,” he added.
Areghan urged candidates, teachers, and parents to maintain the ethics of examination to have a good and sound educational system.
The HNO stressed that all hands must be on deck to fight examination malpractices.
Also, the WAEC’s Board Chairperson, Hajiya Binta Abdulkadri, expressed worry about the involvement of school principals in the exam malpractices.
Abdulkadri, who is also the Director of Senior Secondary Education in the Federal Ministry of Education, hailed the council for the deployment of technology to nab perpetrators of examination malpractice.
Also, the Head Teacher of Government Secondary School at Kubwa in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mr. Musa Zuru, lauded the progress that WAEC had made.
He said schools in the FCT operate zero tolerance for examination malpractice and urged other schools to take same stance.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that 1,621,895 candidates are sitting for the examinations across the country in over 21,000 secondary schools.
-Thenation
