4bn WAEC debt: 402,000 candidates may forfeit 2015 admissions

No fewer than 402,000 candidates who sat for the May/ June Senior Secondary School Certificate examina­tion conducted the West African Examinations Coun­cil (WAEC) may likely forfeit their admission into tertiary institutions for this academic session.

This is owing to the threat by the exam body to withhold the results of the affected can­didates whose states failed to pay for their examination fees totaling over N4billion.

There is the fear that the candidates may be shut out of this year's admission into universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, if the council makes good its threat to withhold their results. In­vestigations revealed that most of the candidates wrote the 2015 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matric­ulation (JAMB) as 'awaiting result candidates'

A senior staff at the Yaba Head office of WAEC dis­closed that about 402,000 candidates who wrote the May/June 2015 West African Senior School Certificate ex­amination (WASSCE) may not get their results to be re­leased in less than two weeks from now.

The Head, National Office (HNO) of WAEC, Mr. Charle Eguridu, warned that unless the 19 defaulting state gov­ernments pay the over N4bil­lion debt owned the council, the results of their candidates would not be released.

Sunday Sun learnt that one of the affected states had al­ready paid the registration fees of their candidates barely 72 hours after the council threat­ened not to release the results of its candidates. However, the management of WAEC has refused to disclose the names of the remaining 18 states which are yet to respond to the threat. The HNO fur­ther said the management was yet to receive any invitation from House of Representa­tives which had at one of its plenary sittings promised to look into the case. Making clarification on the statement credited to Zamfara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulaziz Yari, seeking to know whether the non payment of examina­tion fees included both public and private schools, Eguridu said that the N4billion debt owed the council by the states is for only public candidates the states sponsored.

The decision by the man­agement of WAEC to with­hold the results of some can­didates on account of debt for the registration fees for May/ June 2015 WASSCE is al­ready causing anxiety among candidates and their parents. The inability of the affected states to meet their obliga­tion on the alleged N4billion debt may not be unconnected with the financial difficulties being experienced by some states that couldn't even pay the salaries of their workers for months. Speculations are rife that two states, one in the South West and another in the South East that were badly af­fected by the financial crunch are on the WAEC debtors' list.

The management of WAEC had earlier last week revealed that 19 states owed the council over N4billion for the registration fees of their sponsored candidates for the May/June 2015 WASSCE and gave the affected states two weeks to settle the debt or the results of their candidates would be withheld.