The Registrar of the National Examinations Council (NECO) Prof Ibrahim Wushishi, says the council will consider legal actions against candidates involved in examination malpractices.
Wushishi stated this at an interactive session with newsmen, on the sidelines of the release of results of the 2022 Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (SSCE) for external candidates, on Thursday, in Minna.
The council‘s boss expressed concern over the sharp increase in examination malpractices across the country in its 2022 SSCE (external) with 11,419 cases, as against the 4,454 recorded in 2021.
According to him, this is largely due to the improvement in the strategy and techniques adopted by the monitoring officers, which led to the blacklisting of four supervisors in Rivers, Plateau and Ogun states.
He described collusion among candidates during examinations, as one of the major factors responsible for the high malpractices cases, during the conduct of the 2022 SSCE for external candidates.
“Collusion is in different forms. Talking during an examination, when you exchange paper and pen, which is not allowed, is called collusion.
“Collusion among candidates is one of the key factors responsible for the high number of malpractice cases in this results.
“So all these things were identified and also you can identify collusion while marking the papers, because you could see how candidates’ scripts are very similar. By the time you have the preponderance of these scripts of this nature, you know that collusion has taken place.
”What we do is that we withheld and cancel results, but we have not started taking legal actions. But we have resolved through the process of approving these results, to start taking legal action.
“There is no special tribunal to handle examination malpractices in Nigeria, there are only conventional courts you go to address this.
”When you look at the laws, you will find out there haven’t been many legal actions that have to do with examination malpractices across the country. But we are going to make sure NECO blaze the trail, to address examination malpractices,” Wushishi said.
The registrar added that there were, however, some improvements in the examination, over the previous one, especially in the number of registered candidates.
“Last year, we registered only a little above 40,000 candidates, but this year, we registered more than 60, 000 candidates and about 58,000 of such candidates sat for the examination. So, this is an improvement,” he added.
Recall that the council’s 2022 SSCE for external candidates, commenced from November 21 to December 21, 2022 and was released 57 days after its conduct, with 29 subjects examined.
