By Kolawole Omoniyi
“I don’t know the exact location of the school where I passed all my West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) papers; my husband only collected my passport photograph and returned with fantastic results months later.” A housewife simply identified herself as Aisha and confessed to Grassroots Parrot.
Regardless of the source of her O’ level result, Aisha is now a graduate of the School of Health Technology in Kano, just like every other thousand who indulged in a similar act in Nigeria.
Her case was not different from that of a 22-year-old Aminu, who, after failing his previous examinations for two consecutive years, registered for NECO May/June exams at a government school in Gwale Local Government Area of Kano and passed all subjects in absentia as a ‘proxy candidate’.
“After paying N45, 000 and doing the necessary registration, I didn’t go to the school again. Somebody wrote the exams on my behalf, and I didn’t even know him. I just bought a scratch card at Sabowar Kofa and checked my result when it came out, and I passed all my papers,” Aminu told our correspondent.
In Mohammed Abba’s case, he registered for WAEC at a private school, Dogara Model College Kano, in the Dorayi area. Despite being an external student who was supposed to sit for the November and December private exams, he was accommodated and fully participated in the exams.
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“During the exams, they solve everything for us; they will solve the Objective (OBJ) questions and distribute them to all of us; they will also write the answers to all essay questions on the chalkboard.”
“When the external supervisors are around, they always compromise and enable us to do whatever we like in the exam halls.” Abba narrated in Hausa.
Pay N45, 000 only as a proxy candidate and come back for your results months later, says the Exams Officer.
The schools where Aminu and Abba wrote and passed their exams were among the seven private schools and five public schools visited by our reporter in Kano.
While the entire five public schools expressed readiness to take our reporter as an external candidate to write the illegal WAEC and NECO May/June exams in absentia, only two out of eight visited private schools and declined.
“Oga, you don’t need to participate in the exams; just submit your passport, pay us N45, 000, and we will call you when the result is out. Rest assured that you will pass all the papers.
“We call someone like you a ‘proxy candidate’. See the result of one of the proxy candidates here; she only got one ‘C’ (credit); others are ‘A1s’, ‘B2’, and ‘B3’. An examination officer at Dogara Model College, Aminu Ibrahim, explained.
These scenarios portray the worrisome situation of examination malpractices in Nigeria, vis-à-vis the mass exodus of private candidates to the so-called ‘miracle centers’ being seen as a safe haven to facilitate their ulterior motive of indulging in all forms of examination malpractice.
The sharp practices range from impersonation, multiple handwriting on a particular script, similar handwriting on separate scripts, and a particular script having about four different handwritings, as well as a particular candidate having two separate scripts, among others.
Only 100,000 candidates are now registering for the November/December private exams, compared to 400,000 for the WAEC.
Also confirming the ugly trend, former WAEC Branch Controller in Charge of Kano and Jigawa, Ayobami Lateef Suberu, said the number of prospective candidates registering for November and December private exams has drastically reduced.
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He lamented that due to the limited number of manpower for thorough supervision, the private candidates were leveraging the challenges, hence trooping to the May and June exams.
“They have realized that we have a limited number of staff to thoroughly supervise the overwhelming number of May and June examination candidates; that was what led to the influx of private candidates to the school’s uniform exams.”
“Before, we used to have over 400, 000 candidates registering for the November and December exams, but now we hardly get 100, 000.
“Take Kano, for instance. We have over 500 schools writing May/June exams, but for November/December, the exams will be written at only eight centers across Kano State this year. You can now realize how easy it is to monitor those centers, but it is not humanly possible to achieve that during May/June exams.”
The WAEC boss, however, noted that the examination body had initiated a policy compelling schools to update the data of their students from SS1 to SS3 on WAEC’s portal to enable the latter to track the students’ academic records until SS3 class.
According to the development, Suberu said henceforth only those who would be consistently monitored on the portal are eligible candidates. He promised that full implementation of the initiative would begin by 2020.
We Get Just N300 for Reporting Fraudulent Extermination Centers—Examiner
After scaling the registration and writing stages, the next point where the examination malpractices could be detected is in the course of marking the scripts by the examiners, but this phase is also battling with its peculiar challenge.
One of the examiners who spoke with Grassroots Parrot, Abe Opeyemi, said that considering the difficulties and rigorous process that the examiners are being subjected to in the course of observing the laid-down conditions of proving beyond a reasonable doubt any identified center for examination malpractices, most of the examiners hardly report such.
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“We get just twelve naira on each WAEC paper we mark, an average of N14, 000 in rigorous marking for two consecutive weeks.”
“We usually identify fraudulent activities being perpetrated at these so-called’miracle centers’ in the course of our marking, but we mostly overlook them, because if we report them to authorities, it will subject us to painstaking conditions of proving the massive exams malpractices beyond reasonable doubt.
“And if we achieve this, WAEC only pays us N300 for each center canceled eventually. Can you now imagine that the money does not commensurate with the stress we would incur in the process?”
We Have Banned Many ‘Miracle Centers’ But Still Need the Federal Ministry of Education’s Intervention – (NECO)
An examination officer, simply identified as Malam Sabo, at one of the visited government schools told our reporter the difficulties of registering an illegal candidate for WAEC starting next year due to its new policy of capturing data on prospective candidates from SS1, hence advising our undercover reporter, who indicated interest in May/June WAEC, to opt for NECO.
“There is one thing with WAEC. This time around, WAEC came up with one policy: they came up with registering continuous assessment for students from SS2 class since May/June exams are largely for students; they keep on checking the assessment up to SS3, so those are the only candidates that will write the May/June exams i, but we have no problem with NECO, so I will advise you to pay for NECO.”
“Besides that, you are too big; it is almost your children that are writing the exams, so just pay the money; somebody will sit for you, and I assure you that you will pass the exams.
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From Sabo’s revelation, the perpetrators of examination malpractices seem to be more comfortable with the shortcomings of NECO’s registration process, apparently aiding the fraudulent act.
But when contacted, NECO’s former North West Coordinator, Abdullahi Rani Williams, said the only policy adopted to deal with such a situation was to ensure that only candidates whose photographs appear on the captured bio-data are the only eligible candidates.
“We only rely on our records to ensure that those who registered are eligible candidates. Though we have been banning those schools from being tagged as miracle centers, and we will continue to do that, for this menace to end in our society, the federal ministry of education has a major role to play.” He said.