The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) Wednesday released the results of this year’s May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
Though the actual number of candidates who made five effective credits could not be ascertained, but a breakdown of the candidates’ performances by Council’s Head of Nigeria National Office, Mr. Charles Eguridu, shows that out of 1, 671, 268 candidates that sat for the examination, 889, 636, representing 53.2 per cent made six credits and above, while 1, 074, 065 candidates, representing 64.2 per cent made five credits and above.

Also, 1, 225, 591 candidates (73 per cent) obtained credits and above in four subjects, while 1, 465, 581 (87.69 per cent) made credit passes in just two subjects.

Effective credits refer to passes in five papers, including Mathematics and English Language, which a candidate must obtain to qualify for admission to the university.

However, 145, 505 candidates would still have to wait for a few of their subjects to be fully processed, due to errors traceable to the candidates and the schools they registered.   Besides, the results of 112, 865 candidates, about 6.75 per cent of the total, are being withheld over various cases of examination malpractice. Their cases are being investigated, while the report of the investigation would be presented to the Nigerian Education Committee in due course.
 
This notwithstanding, a total of 1, 543, 683 candidates, representing 91.3 per cent, got their full results.

Eguridu explained that some candidates, who wrote the examination in some northern parts of the country, would not have their full results, because their scripts got missing due to security challenges, which claimed the lives of three WAEC staff members.

He said: “Most of the results were released, but we still have a few misplaced ones, due to insurgent attacks, where some of our officers were murdered and the scripts of some, but not all the subjects, were removed.

“WAEC conducted examination in all the 36 states of the federation, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). We did not envisage these challenges. Our goal is to use some measures to track some of the results, based on statistics of general performance.”

While he assured that the council had statistical records to track some of the missing scripts, Eguridu, however, affirmed that candidates, whose entire scripts went missing due to insurgent attacks, would have no choice but to rewrite the examination, but at no cost.

On the performance trend, he said: “We cannot rule out the fact that the security challenges would affect performance and there might be a possible decline after the release of the final results. But this can be attributed to the emotional trauma associated with fear for students writing under such hostile conditions, where we even lost some members of staff.”

On measures being put in place to check security challenges during subsequent examination, Eguridu said the council was collaborating with the Minister of Education, National Assembly and other security agencies, to ensure the smooth conduct of the next examination.

After a slight drop in 2010, performance in WASSCE, in respect of candidates who made five effective credits, had recorded a marginal improvement. In 2009, 25.5 per cent of the candidates who sat for the examination made five credits, including English language and Mathematics. In 2010, performance dropped to 23.36 per cent, but rose to 30.9 per cent in 2011 before peaking at 39 per cent in 2012 


A source in WAEC told us that all candidates can now check their results online with scratch card on the the website address stated below: www.waecdirect.org
However, candidates are advised to start checking in 24 hours of the declaration of the results.