N/EAST CANDIDATES TO RE-SIT WAEC

. ‘Scripts lost during Boko Haram attacks’
Tens of thousands of candidates for the May/June 2013 West African Examinations Council (WAEC) exams from the North East would have to re-sit them, the exams body announced yesterday.
Head of the WAEC National Office (Nigeria), Charlse Eguridu  said  this while releasing the results for this year’s examinations in Lagos yesterday.
He said the candidates’ scripts were lost in the violence that took place in the region during the period of the examination.
Management, he said, had resolved that such candidates would, however, be considered for the re-write of the affected subjects at no cost.
Announcing the results at a press briefing, Eguridu said insurgency attacks led to the misplacement of examinationscripts and loss of three WAEC staff, making the management unable to declare full results for the May/June exams.
The results of 145,505 candidates, representing 8.62 percent could not be fully processed, and a larger chunk of the number is made up of those affected by insurgency attacks.
He said while the attacks lasted, it was discovered that some vehicles conveying the examination scripts were raided by insurgents and the missing scripts have not been found.
Boko Haram insurgents had launched series of attacks on schools in Borno and Yobe states killing scores of students and teachers, and destroying infrastructure.
In one such instance, gunmen killed many students of Monguno Secondary School in Borno State by slitting their throats, after laying an ambush for them as they returned home from centres where they wrote the WAEC Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE)  in April.
Shortly before that, six secondary school teachers, including a principal were killed in the same area.
Eguridu said: “We are unable to provide statistics of candidates who obtained credit and above in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics at this time, because many candidates in the north eastern part of the country have partial results at the moment, due to security challenges encountered there during the conduct of the examination, particularly loss of scripts,” Eguridu said.
“From the results released so far, we can say there is an improvement in this years results. But about 8.62 percent of the candidates are still having a few of their scripts being processed. If we ignore that percentage and come to tell you that this is the percentage that pass including Mathematics and English Language, that could be misleading.
“It will be difficult for us to ignore that percentage. But in the next few weeks, I may be able to feed you with full details.
“Where the totality of the candidates’ examination scripts are missing, there is nothing we can do about that but we would afford them the opportunity of re-writing the exams at no cost. We decided to release the results because we are aware that some candidates want to use it to gain admission to tertiary institutions.”
Giving further analysis of the results, the WAEC chieftain said a total of 1,689,188 candidates registered for the examinations while 1,671,268 actually participated.
“Of the total number of candidates that sat for the examinations, 889, 636 candidates, representing 53. 23 percent obtained six credits and above; 64.26 percent obtained five credits and above, 73.33 percent obtained four credit and above, while 80.97 percent obtained credits and above in three subjects,” he said.
Eguridu added that a total of 112,865 candidates, representing 6.75 percent are being withheld in connection with various cases of examination malpractice. He said the cases are being investigated and reports of the investigations will be presented to the Nigerian Examinations Committee (NEC) of the council in due course for consideration.
The North East has been consistently rated as trailing behind other regions of the country in education. The infiltration of the Boko Haram insurgents, who are opposed to Western education in the region has worsened the situation in the last few years due to deadly attacks on schools and school children.
The attacks and killings in some of the schools in Borno and Yobe states have also forced teachers and students in public schools in the two states to stay indoors, fearing that they could be attacked. Many schools were also closed in the two states.


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