It is unthinkable that candidates writing the ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) were made to write their English Language Part 2 last Wednesday in the night. This is not only risible, it is absurd.
Coming just weeks after a systematic error in the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB) operations this year caused a big upset for 379,997 United Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) candidates, whatever impelled the 2025 WASSCE candidates to write a paper at such an ungodly hour in these uncongenial times is inexcusable.
It is another national and international odium. It is an insufferable error of judgment on the part of the leadership of the West African Examinations Council(WAEC). And with a due sense of responsibility, the misstep speaks volumes about the competence and administrative acumen of those who are currently at the helm of affairs of the 74-year-old examination body.
Being able to make quick and sound judgments to wriggle out of emergency situations without or with minimal costs, is one of the ultimate tests of a competent management. This manifest ineptitude is particularly least expected of an examination body established since 1951 and which has been conducting this kind of examination for over seven decades!
In this instance, the reason adduced for subjecting the hapless candidates to the trauma of writing a late night examination is too infinitesimal to have caused any upset at all.
While apologizing for the embarrassing inconveniences and delay caused in conducting English Language Paper2, WAEC said it faced considerable challenges primarily due to its efforts to prevent the leakage of any paper.
“WAEC acknowledges the challenges currently being faced during the conduct of WASSCE for school candidates 2025, including the delay in the timely conduct of English Language Paper 2,” said a statement signed by Moyosola Adesina, WAEC’s Head, Public Affairs.
It continued: “While maintaining the integrity and security of our examinations, we faced considerable challenges primarily due to our major aim of preventing leakage of any paper. While we successfully achieved our objective, it inadvertently impacted the timeliness and seamless conduct of the examination.
“Despite our best efforts, we encountered logistical hurdles, security concerns, and sociocultural factors that negatively influenced our operations. In order to forestall future occurrences of this nature, the council is currently collaborating with security agencies.
“We recognise the importance of timely conduct of examinations and the impact of this decision on the candidates, their schools and parents, and we sincerely apologise for any inconveniences caused…
“The West African Examinations Council appreciates the understanding and support of all stakeholders during this period. We remain committed to upholding the highest standard in the conduct of examinations and shall continue to promote academic excellence.”
Part of WAEC’s efforts in this case, we learnt, was the reprinting of English Language Paper 2, believed to have leaked at the last minutes. Paper1, which was the objective part, had been done without any hitch by the candidates earlier in the afternoon. It was the reprinted Paper2, the theory, that caused the needless delay.
That, however, should not have posed any serious challenge at all. Conventional wisdom dictates that Paper2 should simply have been shifted to a more convenient and auspicious date and time, while the reprinting could have been done seamlessly to meet the new deadline.
The management, in this instance, held both the yam and the knife, as they say. Nobody put a knife to their head that they must hold the exam that day by all means. So, it beggars belief that they insisted on going ahead with the original scheduled date in spite of the suspected leakage of the paper in question, necessitating reprinting it and with the time far spent.
Such an irascible decision did not only subject the candidates to an unimaginable trauma, it imperiled their safety at a time the nation is grappling with a serious security maelstrom.
While the examination concluded in some few places fairly timely— between 6pm and 7pm— it went far deep into the night, as late as 10 pm and midnight, in some far-flung areas, including the North Central, Northwest and Northeast where bloodthirsty terrorists kidnap and kill at will, even in the day time. Some candidates in some areas did not get home until 1am! Many got home that late in the rain seriously socked.
Just the same week, a viral video made the rounds online about an exasperated Benue State council chairman bemoaning the merciless, cold-blooded massacre of several persons, including children, one of them a two-year-old, in his domain by the usual vampires who have turned the otherwise ‘food basket’ of the nation into a swathe of killing field.
Under these circumstances, it is chilling to imagine what could probably have befallen some of the hapless WASSCE candidates while they were literally trudging home fatigued, famished, and disheveled after the late night examination, having been literally held ’captive’ at their centers the whole day, especially in more dangerous far North where children of school age, especially girls, are the main attractions of those brutes in human flesh.
Beside security concerns, the candidates went through harrowing experiences writing the exam in virtual darkness. According to reports, in the face of power outages, only a few centers had the luxury of illumination through generating sets.
In many places, those(generating sets) did not work because of either technical faults or lack of fuel. In most cases, parents had to arrange torch lights for their wards and children. Other candidates made do with just their phones’ flashlights to write the examination that involved such mentally tasking tasks as essay and letter writing.
WAEC’s stupefying misstep has also done incalculable damage and injustice to another set of candidates— the visually impaired ones— who were subjected to a double jeopardy of writing an examination in the night.
Meanwhile, the late examination almost resulted in tragedy as hundreds of WASSCE candidates narrowly escaped death when the classrooms in which they were sitting for the examination in Taraba State suddenly caved in and collapsed on them around 6pm.
The incident happened at the Government Secondary School, Namne, Gassol Local Government Area of the state. The classrooms reportedly collapsed during a heavy downpour, which was accompanied by a furious windstorm. The students and their invigilators were trapped in the collapsed classrooms for hours before some residents rescued them.
The late night examination expectedly stirred a nationwide opprobrium and outrage. Parents, candidates, educationalists and other stakeholders took umbrage at WAEC’s insensitivity and imponderable conduct. Most commentators admonished the examination body to put modalities in place with a view to preventing a reoccurrence of the embarrassment.
Already, the House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education and Examination Bodies has summoned WAEC leadership for a hearing on the crisis. The Reps panel was furious that the body did not honour the summons on Thursday. When WAEC’s representatives reported on Friday, they were turned back. The lawmakers insisted that they wanted the Head of the national headquarters in Nigeria (the international headquarters is located in Ghana) in person on Monday (Today).
The Reps panel chairman, Hon. Oboku Abonsizike Oforji, explained that the lawmakers’ intention is not to witch-hunt WAEC, “but to seek answers that will calm public tension and prevent a recurrence of these challenges.” “WAEC,” he added, “has been conducting exams for decades, and we have never experienced this level of disorganization.”
This challenge is certainly a fallout of the insidious evil that has been eating gradually into our public examinations. WAEC claimed that having to make candidates write an examination far into the night was to prevent the leakage of their papers.
If the message WAEC is sending out with the late night examination is that their system has been so compromised that writing that examination that day by all means was ineluctable to prevent it from leaking again, then, we have an emergency pointing to moral depravity on our hands!
Who is to blame? Unconscionable and rapacious WAEC officials who collude with unscrupulous parents have been surreptitiously wracking the system for a long time. Parents involved either purchase leaked papers for their children or arrange “miracle centers” for them. Instead of encouraging their children to study hard and pass those public examinations on their own, morally depraved parents unwittingly compromise their children’s future by “helping” them to pass.
They are so ludicrously infantile about it. They procure high grades in all subjects for their children through stinking study havens called “miracle centers.” The tertiary institutions have been complaining lately and loudly about the fallout of the malfeasance. Embarrassing cases were cited of those who entered the universities with distinctions in most subjects, including Mathematics, but could not solve common equations! Unless WAEC weed out those corrupt officials from the system, the ignoble trend will continue to the peril of the nation’s future.
Similarly, the root of the glitches uncovered in this year’s UTME was later traced to 20 alleged hackers whose activities upended JAMB’s servers, upsetting the applecart. Of course, they ostensibly had internal collaborators among JAMB’s technical team to have succeeded. They were alleged to belong to the same grubby “miracle centers” syndicate.
They hack into JAMB’s systems, in spite of the water tight technical bulwarks erected around those systems, as unfurled recently by the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede, to maneuver high grades for UTME candidates who allegedly pay between N700,000 and N2million, depending on the scores sought. They are already in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s (EFCC’s) net awaiting prosecution after the conclusion of investigations into their activities.
We thought JAMB had been rid of noxious scallywags in the system, who, before Oloyede took charge, regaled us with risible tales of how snakes were swallowing millions of Naira under their care! If scammers could still hack into JAMB’s systems despite those layers of checks and bulwarks, the reform-loving professor of Islamic Jurisprudence still has a lot of moral cleansing to do to free the examination body from those malevolent elements.
In the final analysis, we believe that if the English Language Paper 2 written in the night is allowed to subsist, the failure rate will be very high. There is no doubt that the trauma undergone by the candidates, for no fault of theirs, would have affected the cognitive ability and mental composure they really needed to have passed that examination.
This is more so because it is the theoretical part that requires essay and letter writing. In view of this, we admonish WAEC authorities to cancel the English Language Paper2 outright and reschedule it properly for candidates. That is the least that can be done to guard against a high failure rate that will most likely irk stakeholders in view of the presaging challenge.
WAEC should not jeopardize the candidates’ future by being unnecessarily intransigent about Paper 2 because a credit pass in English Language is compulsory for all candidates to gain admission into the university, irrespective of the course of study.
