By Olayemi Esan
215,149 candidates who sat for the year 2020 West African Senior School Certificate Examination in Nigeria, will not have their results, the West African Examinations Council, has declared. The figure, which represents 13.98% of the total number of candidates who wrote the examination are being withheld in connection with various reported cases of examination malpractice.
The examination body has also announced that the results have been uploaded on the Council website and that certificates of candidates whose results have been fully processed and released would be ready within the next 90 days.
Speaking during a press briefing on Monday in Lagos, the Head of WAEC in Nigeria, Patrick Areghan, said the cases of those who were linked with various offences are being investigated and reports of the investigations would be presented to the appropriate Committee of the Council for determination in due course. “The Committee’s decisions will be communicated to the affected candidates through their various schools.
“81,718 candidates, representing 5.31% have a few of their subjects still being processed due to some errors on the part of the candidates. Efforts are, however, being made to speedily complete the processing to enable all the affected candidates get their results fully processed and released, subsequently,” Areghan added.
He explained that “the analysis of the statistics of the performance of candidates in the examination shows that out of the 1,538,445 candidates that sat the examination, 1,338,348 candidates, representing 86.99%, obtained credit and above in a minimum of any five subjects (i.e with or without English Language and/ or Mathematics;
“1,003,668 candidates, representing 65.24%, obtained credits and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
“Of this number 497,139 i. e. 49.53% were male candidates, while 506,529 i.e. 50.47% were female candidates.
“The percentage of candidates in this category in the WASSCE for School Candidates, 2019, that is, those who obtained credit and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, was 64.18%. Thus, there is a marginal 1.06% improvement in performance in this regard.” He added.