The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has refuted reports that more than 34,000 candidates’ results had been delayed due to alleged examination fraud.
Head of Public Affairs at WAEC, John Kapi, clarified that the Council has not issued any official statement to that effect, describing the circulating reports as “factually inaccurate.”
Speaking on JoyNews’ AM Show, Mr. Kapi stated that WAEC is currently looking into incidents of irregularities found during the recently concluded exams, but it hasn’t finished its investigation or given any numbers as of yet.
“We have not released any official statement. I’ve seen the statement being circulated myself, but there are a lot of factual inaccuracies in it. We are still dealing with the issues and have not concluded investigations,” he said.
Mr. Kapi clarified that although WAEC sent out a more sophisticated inspection and monitoring team this year to guarantee the validity of the test procedure, some instances of malpractice were nevertheless found.
“We had people all over the place monitoring the exams. Of course, there were still some bad nuts in the system, and so we recorded a number of irregularities. However, it is not true that we have withheld the results of over 34,000 candidates. For now, no, we haven’t put any figures out,” he stressed.
According to earlier allegations, which cited a supposedly WAEC announcement, the results of 34,563 candidates were being withheld because of alleged collaboration, impersonation, and the use of unapproved materials.
Investigations into alleged malpractice instances are still underway, according to WAEC, and any official information on results that have been withheld won’t be shared until the Examinations Committee has finished reviewing them.
The Council advised the public to only trust information issued through its official channels and to ignore unconfirmed rumors.
