Only 62,295 of the 310, 077 candidates (20.04per cent) who sat for the Nov./Dec. 2010 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) obtained credit in English, Mathematics and three other subjects in the Examination, Head of the Nigerian National Office of the West African Examination Council (WAEC), Iyi Uwadiae said at a press conference on Thursday in Lagos to announce the result.

Mr Uwadiae, who said the result was not impressive, said the examination result of 51,876 of the candidates, representing 16.73 per cent, were withheld for their involvement in "alleged malpractice."

"A total of 133,507 candidates (43.06 per cent) obtained credit and above in English Language, while 151,569 candidates (48.88 per cent) obtained credit and above in Mathematics," he said.

Early release of results

Mr Uwadiae also told journalists that 33 blind candidates took part in the examination and only 4 of them got credit passes in five subjects including English Language. The blind candidates are exempted by regulation from registering for mathematics and science based subjects.

"All the reports on cases of involvement in examination malpractice have been compiled for presentation to the Nigerian Examination Committee of the Council in March," he said, adding that the result was released two weeks ahead of schedule to enable students use these for registration purposes in higher institutions that had admitted them.

In order to reposition its activities, he also said that the examination body will soon modify its examination model to the e-testing format (electronic test) but that the process was at its experimental stage.

"The quick release of the result is due to the commitment of the markers and the effective application of our new computer software for processing results," he said.

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The question I guess is: Why do we do so badly in WAEC and how can we stop this unpalatable scenario?