Reasons Nigerian Students Failed WAEC Serially
A born-again Christian WAEC examiner’s account
+ The Government Connection
Last year has been described as a record-breaker for West Africa Examinations Council (WAEC) in Nigeria: Students who sat for its 2016 exam in the country, as the report shows, had the best result released in the past 28 years. It was a performance too momentous to ignore. But it raised pertinent questions. Prominent among them was: what had accounted for the monotonous poor performance in the preceding 27 years?
To a greater percentage of the older generation of Nigerians, the standard of education has fallen abysmally; and the poor WAEC results released over the years, they claim, is the best indication of this. They are wont to boast of the outstanding academic feats performed by students in their generation, and wonder why the present youth are not replicating them.
But a WAEC examiner, who claims to have become a born-again Christian some years back, recently adduced a disturbing reason for the mass failure of candidates sitting for WAEC exam in Nigeria.
According to the ‘man of God’, who requested assurance of anonymity when contacted by BETH NEWS, he has been marking WAEC exam papers for more than 20 years. From his experience over the years marking WAEC papers, he said, barely one out of 20 candidates – that is 5 per cent – manage to pass their papers. But this not because those who passed were exceptional in brilliance. Rather, he said, it depended largely on the disposition of the person marking their papers were marked and, generally, luck.
When asked what he meant by this, he went into a lengthy explanation.
He said each paper marked fetches the marker N100. And because of the money, he could determine to mark 3000 students’ exam papers in less than one week; a number that apparently impedes on efficiency and thoroughness. He further said that, to save time, orders often come from above that any candidate who could not get the first 5 question correct should have the remaining answers marked wrong. In such case, they do not bother to continue to critically assess the paper but merely base the paper on the initial five questions got wrong. This, he said regretfully, serves a dual purpose – increased revenue to the Council and government; as well as more papers marked by the examiner, translating to higher remuneration. Sadly, the plight of the student given a raw deal by this system – and has to waste much time and money, as well as suffer psychological stress and possibly loss of confidence – does not feature in their consideration.
While BETH NEWS is at a loss determining the veracity of the examiner’s claim, we call on government, WAEC, the various education authorities, and the general public to look into the matter with a fine-tooth comb..
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