Is Your State In WAEC debt: 412,000 candidates may not gain admission to varsities
If the West African Examinations Council goes ahead with its threat to withhold the results of students in states owing the registration fees for the May/June 2015 West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination, a total of 412,000 candidates will be affected. This figure represents the total number of affected candidates in the 19 debtor states.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that the 412,000 candidates’ chances of gaining admission into universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and others including specialised schools, will be threatened if their results are not released.
WAEC conducts several international and national examinations in all member countries, but only conducts the WASSCE for school candidates in May/June and private candidates in November/December in Nigeria.
The WAEC, during the week, threatened to withhold results of candidates from 19 out of the 36 states of the federation over the non-payment of N4bn examination registration fees by the state governments to the body. However, investigations by Saturday PUNCH shared that one of the debtor states, Akwa Ibom, had paid its debt on Thursday, bringing the number of states owing WAEC down to 18.
The affected candidates are from public secondary schools in the debtor states. Candidates who sat for the examination in private schools in the affected states will not be affected should the crisis go unresolved.
Findings show that the results of the examination, which was reportedly written by about 1.2 million candidates, are likely to be released in about two weeks from now.
Kebbi, Osun, Ogun, Oyo, Zamfara, Cross River, Niger and Nasarawa are some of the states that top the list of debtors, according to Saturday PUNCH’sinvestigation.
The WAEC’s Head of National Office, Lagos, Mr. Charles Eguridu, had announced at a news briefing during the week that in addition to the May/June 2015 West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination, some states also owe the body registration fees for the May/June 2014 WASSCE.
Eguridu said the council had “written to the affected state governments without any response” and that the poor response of the debtor states was threatening the operations of the council.
He also said the results of the candidates sponsored by the debtor states might not be released.
He said, “A total number of 19 states in the country owe the Council in respect of entry fees for state government sponsored candidates for the May/June 2015 WASSCE. Some states also still owe the Council registration fees for the May/June 2014 WASSCE.
“We, therefore, want to publicly plead with the affected states to off-set the registration fees of their candidates as soon as possible, as we cannot guarantee that the results of their candidates for the May/June 2015 will be released along with others.”
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