The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has publicly announced that it would never allow itself to be dragged into partisan politics by any politician or their agents at whatever level in the country.
The Head of National Office, WAEC Nigeria, Mr Patrick Areghan, made this clear on Thursday in a statement made available to reporters by the head of the public affairs unit of the organisation, Mrs Moyosola Adesina.
He expressed disappointment at which some social media organisations alleged WAEC in recent times to have attempted to pervert the course of justice by allegedly “conniving with some highly placed persons whose electoral victories in the last national elections are being challenged in court by their opponents” without supporting their reports with facts.
Areghan said that part of the reports was an allegation that “top WAEC Directors at the Yaba office received huge sums of money in several tranches to conceal and doctor information on WAEC records concerning some defendants and that the organisation has been complicit in denying all litigants access to examination records in proof of their cases in court.
He said all those claims, including that “an investigative agency had gone to Ghana and completed investigations on a particular matter, while some WAEC officials blocked efforts to do same in Nigeria,” were all fabricated news by the authors.
Areghan declared that WAEC would have ignored all the allegations since they were baseless and malicious but came up with a reaction to put the record straight and do some enlightenment in the interest of the Nigerian public and for the sake of the country’s education sector.
WAEC boss explained that the council, with a clear mandate of conducting examinations for SS3 students and awarding certificates to them, has never engaged in unethical practice in its 71 years history and would not do so.
He said WAEC had been appearing in court for years on invitations to confirm the authenticity of its results, certificates, or documents tendered by some litigants and would not hesitate to do the same once called upon, irrespective of the persons involved.
He explained further that it’s embarrassing that some media organisations could be ignorant that WAEC Ghana cannot answer for Nigeria WAEC on issues that concern Nigeria and vice versa as two of them just like three other WAEC member countries, keep separate records of results, certificates and documents of their candidates either in the school-based or external examinations.
Areghan, however, declared that even though a candidate can have either one or both their result and certificate lost due to theft, fire, flood and so forth, no candidate can claim to have a certificate without a result.
Even at that, he added, such a candidate can request Result Confirmation or a certificate reprinted as the case may be only when proof of ownership of such document is provided.
