WAEC glitches, wakeup call to examination bodies

The scandal that rocked the conduct of the West African School Certificate Examinations this year has further eroded the credibility of the nation’s educational system. The incident summarises that the organiser of the examinations, the West African Examinations Council, failed in its responsibility to safeguard the integrity of its examinations.

It was reported that some of the examination papers were compromised. Some of them became accessible in the public domain before the days or hours they were scheduled to be taken.

It was the English Language examination leakage that exposed the mess that went on with the conduct of this year’s WASCE; otherwise, the council would have covered it up. The English Language examination that was slated for the morning that day could not be held as scheduled because WAEC had to replace the leaked version. That led to the late arrival of the materials at the examination centres on that day.

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In a country marked by dilapidated infrastructure, it was inevitable that many schools in the country, especially in remote areas, would not get the materials on time. That led to some students being forced to write the all-important English Language examination in the dark. That exposed Nigerians to ridicule in the eyes of the world, seeing our future engineers, medical doctors, teachers, and other professionals writing their examinations in pitch darkness with flickering torchlights.

Examination leakage has been a challenge to the integrity of the academic certification process in Nigeria. When students have access to examination papers before sitting for such examinations, what is there to certify their academic prowess? Whatever follows from such processes is a mere exercise in futility and serves no purpose in determining the capacities of all those involved.

This trend should be a concern to everyone who cares about the future of this country. Nigeria cannot be dreaming of becoming a big player in the emerging competitive global economy when those who form the national workforce are being enabled to cheat their way through the certification process.

The future belongs to knowledgeable and skilled individuals. So, Nigeria must draw the line now on academic standards and how they are acquired.

This is more so given the equally scandalous experience that happened with the conduct of examinations by the Joint Matriculation and Admissions Board (JAMB). What began with the mass failure of candidates who sat for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination ultimately ended up being the result of a glitch in JAMB’s system. In other words, the board’s system was tampered with by hackers, which again meant that the integrity of its system was compromised.

These two incidents must be taken seriously by the authorities. They present the possibility of some students cheating their way through secondary school education and into universities and other higher institutions. That prospect will spell danger for the growth of the country’s educational system and its products.

They sound like a wake-up call to the authorities, the institutions, the parents, and the larger society. The institutions – JAMB, WAEC, and other examination bodies – must wake up and take their responsibilities more seriously than they have done so far. Nigeria has had enough of these embarrassing examination leakages that demean us in the eyes of the international community.

The government should come up with enforceable laws on examination malpractice. Such laws must spell out specific punishments for people involved in examination leakages on both the supply and demand sides. While in the past such attempts had tended to punish the beneficiaries, that is, the candidate, Daily Trust suggests that those who are responsible for the supply of the examination questions should also be identified and punished appropriately.

With this, the examination bodies would be forced to sit up and plug all the holes through which the papers leak out.

Again, an institution such as WAEC is old enough to have its printing press, which will help it eliminate the incidence of question papers being compromised. And if it feels it cannot own such a facility alone, nothing stops it from teaming up with JAMB and NECO to establish a formidable printing press that can raise the standard to an acceptable level of security.

On their part, parents and guardians of candidates must know that they do harm to these young ones when they aid them to engage in examination malpractice. Children who cheat their way through this low level of the educational ladder are only being propped up for stunted growth in the future. They will get to a level where they can go no further, and at such a point, they are bound to become a threat to society in one way or another.

We call on parents and the students themselves to embrace the spirit of hard work and tenacity.  This is the honourable path to greatness in life.