WAEC to prosecute 56 ‘rogue’ website operators for leaking WASSCE questions

The West African Examination Council (WAEC) said it has identified 56 rogue website operators that leaked its West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (WASSCE).

The Head of National Office, Nigeria (HNO) Mr Patrick Areghan, disclosed this on Thursday in Abuja while monitoring the examination in some Government Secondary Schools. Areghan said that the identified rogue website operators would be prosecuted by the police in due course.

According to him, some dubious supervisors are responsible for some of these malpractices during examinations. While noting that the Council has no control over social media, he said some people are also in the business of posting questions on social media and asking candidates to subscribe on their websites and then they give them fake questions

Supervisors are also culpable

Explaining how questions get leaked, Areghan blamed some WAEC supervisors for the act. According to him:

• “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 snap the question papers and send them to their syndicate groups. You now begin to ask questions about 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.
• “Some gullible parents and students will go for it and destroy themselves because there is no way they can get our questions.”

15 persons arrested

The WAEC head said that the council had put in place technology to detect any form of maleficence from any location. As a result, he said the Council had arrested some persons across states during the ongoing examination.

• “I am happy to announce that so far in this exam, we have made a lot of arrests. We made arrests in Ibadan, Maiduguri, Abeokuta, Osogbo, Umuahia, and many other states. 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 centers 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, therefore 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.

A total of 1,621,895 candidates are currently sitting for the examinations across the country in over 21,000 secondary schools.

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