WAEC laments on supervisors aiding malpractice

By Maryam Abeeb

The West African Examination Council has expressed worries on supervisors who are supposed to take questions to examination centres are aiding and abetting malpractices across the country.
The Head of National Office, Nigeria, Mr Patrick Areghan, said this while monitoring examination in Abuja.
He identified 56 rogue website operators that leaked its West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations.
Areghan said that the identified rogue website operators would be prosecuted by the police in due course, saying “Some gullible parents and students will go for it and destroy themselves because there is no way they can get our questions,” he said.
“In all, we have made arrests of no fewer than 15 persons comprising candidates, supervisors, school proprietors, and others connected with the malpractices.
“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 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.
“We have a regulation to release papers to supervisors one hour before commencement time to enable them to go from the collection point to the administrative point because of distance in some schools.
“But what they do is to snap the question papers and send them to their syndicate groups.
“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.
The WAEC head said that the council had put in place technology to detect any form of maleficence from any location.