The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has recently brought forth serious allegations against supervisors, accusing them of aiding and abetting malpractices during the ongoing West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations across the country. Mr. Patrick Areghan, the Head of National Office, Nigeria, made these claims on Thursday while personally overseeing the examination process in several Government Secondary Schools in Abuja.

During his meticulous monitoring, Areghan uncovered a network of 56 rogue website operators involved in leaking the highly confidential examination papers. Expressing concern over the gravity of the situation, he affirmed that the identified operators would face prosecution by the police in due course. “Some gullible parents and students will fall victim to these unscrupulous individuals, ultimately harming themselves as there is no way they can obtain our genuine examination questions,” Areghan emphasized.

The WAEC official further disclosed that the council had already apprehended a total of 15 individuals involved in the malpractices, including candidates, supervisors, and school proprietors. Areghan pointed out that supervisors, in particular, posed a significant challenge, as they were allegedly profiting from the illicit activities. “The examination is taking place in over 21,000 secondary schools in Nigeria, but we have a mere 2,000 staff members. It is simply impossible to man every center effectively,” he lamented.

According to Areghan, the supervisors assigned by state ministries of education were reportedly turning the examination process into a lucrative business. He added, “We are not in control of social media, and individuals with nefarious intentions take advantage of this. They post questions for advertisement purposes and entice candidates to subscribe to their websites, where they provide fake questions.”

The head of WAEC revealed a disconcerting method employed by the rogue operators. “We have a regulation that stipulates question papers should be released to supervisors one hour before the commencement of the examination. This allows them ample time to travel from the collection point to the administrative point due to the distances involved in some schools,” Areghan explained. “However, instead of adhering to the regulations, these supervisors clandestinely photograph the question papers and share them with their syndicate groups.”

Areghan expressed his dismay, noting that candidates were already seated in the examination halls while the compromised questions were being circulated. He highlighted that the perpetrators even altered the format of the questions, sometimes appending the current year, creating confusion by presenting 2023 questions as if they were from the 2020 examination.

Undeterred by these illicit activities, the WAEC head assured the public that the council had implemented advanced technology to detect any form of maleficence from any location. With the prosecution of the rogue operators imminent, WAEC seeks to send a stern message that malpractices will not be tolerated, safeguarding the integrity and fairness of the examination process for all candidates.