The West African Examination Council, WAEC, has identified 56 rogue website operators who leaked its some papers in the on-going West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations.
The Head of National Office, HNO, Nigeria, Mr. Patrick Areghan, while monitoring the examination in some Government Secondary Schools on Thursday in Abuja said that the identified rogue website operators would be prosecuted by the police in due course.
Areghan disclosed that some dubious supervisors are responsible for some of these malpractices during 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 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”, he said.
Some gullible parents and students will go for it and destroy themselves because there is no way they can get the questions, the WAEC head said.
The council had put in place technology to detect any form of maleficence from any location with lots of arrests made in Ibadan, Maiduguri, Abeokuta, Osogbo, Umuahia and many other states so far in the exam, Areghan boasted.
“In all, we have made arrest of no fewer than 15 persons comprising candidates, supervisors, school proprietor and other connected with the malpractices.
“Supervisor are our problem; 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?
“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.
He appealed to candidates, teachers and parents to maintain the ethics of examination to have a good and sound educational system saying that all hands must be on deck to fight the monsters called examination malpractices.
The WAEC Board Chair, Hajiya Binta Abdulkadri expressed worry with the involvement of school principals in the exam malpractices.
Abdulkadri, who is also the Director, Senior Secondary Education, Federal Ministry of Education, commended the council for the deployment of technology to nap perpetrators of examination malpractice.
The principal, Government Secondary School, Kubwa, Mr. Musa Zuru commended the progress made by WAEC saying that schools in FCT operate zero tolerance for examination malpractice and urged other schools to key in.
Credible News reports that 1,621,895 candidates are sitting for the examinations across the country in over 21,000 secondary schools.
