WAEC withholds results of 215,149 candidates for exam malpractice (2020 WAEC results)

News today has it that the West African Examination Council (WAEC) withheld the results of 215,149 candidates who sat for the 2020 West African Senior School Certificate Examination in Nigeria. According to the council who disclosed the reason behind the withholding of the results saying that 13.98% of the total number of candidates who wrote the examination are suspected of examination malpractices. Mr Patrick Areghan who is the head of WAEC in Nigeria, disclosed this while having a brief meeting in Lagos when he was announcing the release of the results of this year's WASSCE. According to his statement " The case are being investigated and reports of the investigations will be presented to the suitable committee of the council for the determination in due course. Through the committee's decision it will be communicated to the affected candidates in their various schools". “81,718 candidates, representing 5.31% have a few of their subjects still being processed due to some errors on the part of the candidates. Efforts are however, being made to speedily complete the processing to enable all the affected candidates get their results fully processed and released, subsequently,” Areghan added. According to the analysis carried, he then further explained that the statistics of the performance of candidates in the examination shows that out of the 1,538,445 candidates who wrote the examination, 1,338,348 candidates, representing 86.99%, obtained credit and above in a minimum of any five subjects (i.e with or without English Language and/ or Mathematics; "candidates who obtained credits and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics were 1,003,668 representing 65.24%". Of this number 50.47% were female candidates, while 49.53% were male candidates. “The percentage of candidates in this category in the WASSCE for School Candidates, 2019, that is, those who obtained credit and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, was 64.18%. Thus, there is a marginal 1.06% improvement in performance in this regard.” According to mr Areghan "certificates of candidates whose results have been fully processed and released will be ready within the next 90 days, counting from today.”