By Destiny Day
The ongoing Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) being conducted by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) in Ogun State, Nigeria may be experiencing some measure of compromise, TheNiche has learnt.
On Thursday, indications emerged that candidates who sat for the examination in Ifo local government area of Ogun State wrote the day’s papers in the night contrary to the WAEC rules.
For example, English Language (Essay) examination scheduled to hold at 9 am on Thursday did not take place until afternoon while the objective and test of Oral English examinations reportedly took place in the evening and ended by past 7 pm same day.
One of the students who sat for the examination in one of the schools in the local government said they were not offered any reasons why the examinations were delayed by the invigilators.
Some teachers in the school could also not explain what exactly was responsible for the delay, but many of the parents were alarmed that their wards were kept in school for such a long time to write examinations that ought to have ended before 2pm.
For instance, they said in Abeokuta the same English Language examination started around 10 am and ended around after noon.
But in the schools in Ifo council, the custodians of the papers in Mowe area never brought the papers until afternoon when other centres in other states had finished conducting theirs.
“This same English Language examination was taken in Lagos today (Thursday), and the students had long finished and gone home, but our children are still leaving the examination hall almost at 9pm, meaning something was wrong somewhere,” said a parent who craved anonymity.
TheNiche learnt that in areas where students are assisted to write the examination by their teachers and invigilators, situations that would make the examination to be unduly delayed and possibly compromised could be created.