The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has said 1,621,853 candidates are set to commence the 2023 examination on Monday, May 8, 2023.
WAEC’s Head of National Office, Mr Patrick Areghan who revealed this at a pre-examination press briefing yesterday added that the candidates are from 20,851 government and private schools who registered for the examination.
He said the candidatures for the 2023 WASSCE increased by 13, 868 compared to the 1,607,985 candidates who registered in 2022.
Areghan lamented the non-adherence to the registration deadline by private schools who were in the habit of shopping for external candidates to make up numbers, contrary to the policy which does not allow the enrolment of private candidates for school candidates examination.
The HNO noted that though not compulsory, the National Identification Number (NIN) was a component of the registration requirements, adding that no candidate was disqualified from registration as a result of non-submission of NIN at the beginning of the exercise, or, even later.
“Registration started on the 10th of October, 2022 with a set deadline of January 27, 2023, and eventually extended to March 31, 2023.
It could not even end due to the shenanigans of some private schools, entries eventually closed on April 15, 2023,” he said.
Areghan maintained the zero tolerance stance of the council towards all forms of examination malpractice, adding that penalties for involvement in examination malpractice will always be meted out to erring candidates, invigilators, supervisors, schools, WAEC officials, etc, as would be approved by the Nigeria Examinations Committee (NEC), the highest decision-making organ of the council on examination matters in the country.
He also said the council’s Candidate Self-Service/Chatbot would allow students to confirm data uploaded for them by schools to make necessary corrections on such data.
According to him, the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) will end June 23, 2023.
