SSCE: 10 supervisors nabbed over malpractices, says WAEC

*Alleges that supervisors promoting examination irregularities

THE West African Examinations Council, WAEC, yesterday, said it has so far arrested 10 supervisors across the country over malpractices in its ongoing Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination, SSCE.

The council blamed supervisors on the unending malpractices during its examinations in the country, noting that they most of them were not reliable.

The Head of Nigeria National Office of WAEC, Patrick Areghan, revealed this to newsmen in Abuja, during supervision of the examination in four centres the area.

Açcording to him, the arrests were made in Lagos, Kano, Beyelsa and Kaduna states, respectively.

Areghan said: “Our major problem lies with the supervisors as only few of them are reliable and it’s unfortunate these are the supervisors that were nominated by the various states ministries of education and we employed them.”

” We don’t have the power to nominate any supervisors on our own, we only made use of credible teachers supplied to us by the ministry,” he said.

He regretted that,”But for a mere pot of porridge, they sell their conscience and allow candidates to come into the examination hall with phones to snap question papers and post them on designated platforms.”

Açcording to him, “Some of the supervisors belong to syndicate groups that run the platform.”

He, however,said: “The good news is we catch them and they don’t go unpunished as we are working hand in hand with the Nigerian police.”

Regretting also that some schools dupe some candidates seeking to write examinations in their centres of huge sums of money,he said those who fall prey to the such dubious school operators should not blame the council.

He expressed satisfaction with the conduct of the ongoing examination in Abuja, even as he advised candidates to desist from use of expo.

He said “those who employ use of text books in examinations hall or impersonation would not get their results.”

“The most troubling one is the activities of roadside websites operators whereby they post their so called expo on digital platforms and use it to deceive gullible candidates and parents who pay for their wards to access these platforms.

“They are fake and even if they are not, when will they have time to access those materials as examination is already going on?” He asked.

The Permanent Secretary at Federal Ministry of Education, David Adejo,who also spoke, expressed satisfaction with the process, saying the deployment of technology in the authentication of candidates had  reduced malpractice.

 “Malpractices can occur in the examination centres with the collision of the school authority. Biometric machines have reduced malpractice to the barest minimal, I will be surprised if I hear of any malpractice”,he said.