By Ferdinand Aduma
December 17, 2015.
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) today revealed that, out of the 237,154 candidates that sat for this year’s November/December West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), only 113,573 or 47.8 percent of them obtained five credits.
But the council’s recently appointed Head of Nigeria National Office, Mr. Olutise Isaac Adenipekun, who made the announcement at a briefing in Lagos today, did not clarify if Mathematics and English Language were among the five credits. A combination of five credits without English and Mathematics is deemed ineffective because it cannot facilitate admission by any university or polytechnic in the country.
According to Adenipekun, while 79, 490 or 31.5 percent made six credits and above, 124,253 or 61.6 percent made four credits. A total of 175,718 candidates also obtained credits and above in three subjects, while 200, 304 or 84,6 percent made only two credits.
The total figure of candidates consisted of 124,512 males and 112,642 females. Thirty-seven of the candidates were visually challenged. While over 99 percent of the results were fully processed, 1, 612 candidates, representing 0.68 percent, still have a few of their subjects being processed due to some errors “traceable mainly to the candidates in the course of registration or writing the examination.” Such errors, he noted, are now being corrected to enable the affected candidates have their results.
However, Adenipekun affirmed that the results of 28,768 candidates, representing 12.1 percent are being withheld “for further investigation in connection with various cases of examination malpractice.”
WAEC’s Head of National Office (HNO), Mr Olutise Isaac Adenipekun at the briefing today in Lagos.
PHOTO: Ferdinand Aduma
He said: “The reports of the investigations will be presented to the Nigeria Examinations Committee (NEC) of the council for consideration (while) the committee’s decisions will be communicated to the affected candidates in due course.”
Adenipekun also assured that candidates would be able to check the details of their performance on the council’s website www.waecdirect.org within the next 24 hours.
On the council’s efforts to further protect the integrity of its examination, Adenipekun revealed the examination body’s adoption of a new form of technology.
He said: “Beginning with the November/December 2015 WASSCE, (WAEC) deployed another cutting-edge technology in the conduct of its examination. This new development is called CredenceOne.
“It is the intersection of mobile communications and biometric technology. It is a mobile biometric identification and verification system, built on the Android Operating System. It is used to initiate and complete the biometric verification of candidates’ fingerprints. The device is programmed to compare the scanned fingerprint template with the initial templates captured during registration and display the candidates’ details to check impersonation. The system also takes attendance and automatically sends the records online to the remote central server for reporting.”
