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WASSCE: 8,350 Private Candidates Sit For WAEC’s Maiden CBT Nationwide

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The West African Examinations Council (WAEC said on Saturday that its maiden Computer Based Test (CBT) for WASSCE first series, for private candidates, would eliminate the major source of examination malpractice.

The council’s Head of National Office (HNO) Dr Amos Josiah Dangut stated this while monitoring the examination in some centres in Lagos.

Recall that council had stated its readiness to conduct the maiden edition of West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE ) first series for private candidates, using the CBT platform.
The examination commenced on Jan. 31 and would be concluded on Feb. 17.

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Dangut said that prior to the introduction of the CBT, the contents of the examination were usually let out before the test through some mischief makers who might have a role to play during the examination.

So, I think with the introduction of this CBT, the issue of candidates having fore knowledge before the commencement of the examination will largely have been eliminated. It can no longer be business as usual.

“The major avenue, source of leakage, where we used to have supervisors carry these question papers from one point to the other will no longer obtain.

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READ ALSO: WAEC Adopts CBT For SSCE

“When I say leakage, I mean the tearing of the bag containing the examination questions and sneaking out one. So, with this new concept, this will never happen.

“Again, you can see with the sitting arrangements that the candidates are also separated with cubicles that will not enable them to engage in any form of examination malpractice, coupled with the fact that they have to be dealing with different subjects at the point in time,” he said.

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The council boss explained that given the CBT mode of examination, one does not need a special software to check examination malpractice, because the questions vary from one candidate to the other.

Dangut said that so far, the process had been encouraging, as there had not been any reported case of infraction or technical hitch recorded across the designated centres for the examination nationwide.

According to him, the council prepared well, did a lot of sensitisation, and gave the candidates the opportunity to try hands-on before the commencement of the examination.

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He said that power supply would not affect the examination as the council had made two alternative arrangements outside public supply.

The HNO said that power was critical in choosing all the centres engaged to conduct the test.

READ ALSO: CBT WASSCE Will Cause Mass Failure In The North, Arewa Youths Express Fear

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He said that the council was not on the general internet and was using the intranet for the conduct of the examination.

“Today, the general Mathematics is taking place and as you can see, everything is moving on smoothly.
“The systems are top notch, with zero hitches recorded since the commencement of the examination on Jan. 31.

“This examination is being conducted simultaneously across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

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“We have about 8,350 candidates sitting for this examination as of today, because we have opportunity for people who want to register and start their own examination the next day.

“We call such candidates ‘walk in candidates’ and because of that too, the entry keeps going up everyday.

“For example, last week, when we were having the briefing exercise, we had about 8,230 candidates, but like I said before, as we speak, we have over 8,350 in all, because of the ‘walk in’ candidates.

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READ ALSO: CBT WASSCE Will Cause Mass Failure In The North, Arewa Youths Express Fear

“Candidates who would want to sit for a paper on Monday are doing their registration today. They will have to register at least 24 hours before the commencement of the paper they intend to be examined on,” he said.

The HNO added that the WAEC Test and Training Centre (WTTC) at Ogba was one of the 10 centres being used for the examination in Lagos.

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According to him, the council is optimistic that it will have a successful outing of the maiden edition of the WASSCE CBT for private candidates, given the state of its readiness.

He said that the council had interacted with the stakeholders and they had all expressed delight at the development.

“You know, perception has a lot to do with performance. The stakeholders had anticipated very well and the result is what we are getting so far.

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“We have said right from onset that this is a hybrid examination. The objective questions are beamed on the screen and are answered on the screen.

READ ALSO:WAEC Set To Introduce CBT For WASSCE

“But for essay, just like this general Mathematics paper 2, you will find out that have answer booklet provided for them where they are expected to do their calculations but the questions too are beamed on the screen. That is what makes it hybrid mode,” he stated.

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Dr Dangut said that results of the examination were expected to be out 45 days after the last paper.
He expressed optimism that the second series of the WASSCE for private candidates that would begin in November would also be taken through the CBT mode.

“We are encouraged with what we have now for this maiden edition.

“We sat on the drawing board, got our act right and that is why we are able to deploy the computer mode for this examination.

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“So, after this one, we will also go back to the drawing board and together strategise for the second series.”

Some of the candidates who participated in the examination said it gave them the opportunity to have a feel of what obtains with other computer based tests in the age of technology.

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OPINION Generals, Marabouts And Boko Haram

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By Lasisi Olagunju

General Lucky Irabor wrote a book that attracted a gathering of Generals in Abuja last Friday. Irabor, in the book, describes the January 1966 coup as “a shield that became a sword;” a solution that became a problem. He may be right. Bishop Matthew Kukah, who reviewed the book, described the January 1966 coup as the nation’s primary crime scene. I disagree. Nigeria’s real crime scene is located far before 1966. We still have not learnt any lesson.

General Irabor is the immediate past Chief of the Defence Staff. Born 5 October, 1965, he was a baby – three months, ten days old – when January 1966 happened to Nigeria. General Olusegun Obasanjo wrote the Foreword to the book and chaired the Abuja gathering. I have not seen what he wrote in the Foreword but I heard what he said at the book launch. He said Boko Haram was not about politics and not really about religion. So what is it about? He suggested that frustration and lack of “better life” perverted the pervert. He then wondered why terror and terrorism have become Nigeria’s way of life.

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There were other Generals there. One of them is the Sultan of Sokoto; he belonged in the Armoured Corps. Another is the Etsu Nupe. Both of them left the army as Brigadier-General. The Sultan said Generals don’t retire. And because they do not retire or get tired, we keep seeing them in our lives beyond the barracks. Irabor’s book launch turned out to be a confab of Generals in search of what eludes them on the battlefield – victory over the collective enemy.

They were there looking for a solution to Nigeria’s interminable terrorism. I watched them and reached for 16th century English statesman, scholar and saint, Sir Thomas More. In his ‘A Dialogue Concerning Heresies’, More wrote a line which became the idiom: “looking for a needle in a haystack.” Our Generals need to interrogate that English clause locked in seven words of frustration. It speaks to their gathering. What they seek they won’t find except they really want to see it.

Irabor’s book carries the title: ‘Scars’ in bold, capital letters of blood. Beyond quotes from the review, I have not seen the book to get what his ‘SCARS’ really talks about. But ‘scars’ as book or as sabre cuts on the face cannot be anyone’s sweet story.

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Bishop Kukah, the book reviewer, said Irabor’s story is about Nigeria’s scars of insecurity; the ugly, unhealed, unhealable wound gashed on our collective face by Boko Haram. President Goodluck Jonathan was there with the Generals; and he got the metaphor right. He said the abduction of Chibok Girls is an everlasting scar on the face of his presidency; he hinted that it was a monument to leadership failure. But is Jonathan the only one with that scar?

Nineteenth century Scottish novelist and essayist, Robert Louis Stevenson (R. L. Stevenson) wrote ‘Treasure Island’, an excellent novel of pirates and blood, hidden treasure chests, death and disappointments. It was published in 1883. If you read more of Stevenson beyond his popular fiction, you would likely come across where he wrote the truth that our “wealth took their value from our neighbour’s poverty.” You would read how this someone who lived and died 131 years ago saw that despite the “free man’s” pretence to kindness, “the slaves are still ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-taught, ill-housed, insolently entreated, and driven to their mines and workshops by the lash of famine.” The passage reads like it is about 2025 Nigeria and its unfed, unclaimed, unclad, untaught children.

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I watched the cream of Nigerian Generals, serving and retired, on Friday at that book launch of one of them. I watched them pontificating, one by one, on TV about Nigeria and its scars and I remembered Major-General Sir Thomas Vandeleur in R. L. Stevenson’s ‘The Rajah’s Diamond’, a story in his ‘New Arabian Nights’ published in 1881. Thomas Vandeleur is a General in blind, desperate but fruitless search for his family’s lost jewel. Nigeria’s Generals, like Vandeleur, old adventurers in uniform who once held the diamond of power, have ruled and been ruined by it. The nation’s story, like Vandeleur’s, is one of obsession with that fatal jewel called authority, which brings suffering to all who covet it.

Our Generals are helpless. That is what I saw at that event on Friday. Power has cast Nigeria’s fortunes into the river of defeat; it has left generations searching the muddy depths for the nation’s lost promise. Dethroned by coups and transitions, Nigeria’s power elite always come back as “handsome tobacconists” of democracy, reinvented messiahs and born-again democrats. They trade in influence and illusion; their scars, like Stevenson’s Vandeleur’s, are the marks of past violence disguised as experience, and their continued grip on Nigeria’s destiny shows that, though the diamond of nationhood is lost, its curse endures.

When I get General Irabor’s book to read, I will search for words that define wounds inflicted by bad and absent leadership, by aborted dreams and betrayed hopes. I will look for phrases, for sentences and paragraphs on heists that cut deeper into the nation’s face. I will love to read through its jagged pages of dreams deferred.

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I scanned the Generals’ faces and read their lips. The gashes of insecurity, from Boko Haram’s bombs in Borno to herders’ bullets in Kwara, are the handiwork of decades of neglect and decay. The scar of insecurity has become our national birthmark, neither healed nor hidden; its permanence mocks every promise of reform. Obasanjo said at the book event that “Boko Haram is now virtually becoming part of our life. Should we accept that? If we should not accept it, what should we do? How much do we know? Even from the other side, and from this side, have we been active enough? Have we been proactive enough?” If a General and former president asked us those questions, to whom should we then turn for answers? Like Vandeleur’s scar, Nigeria’s wounds carry an ambiguity; they are signs of survival, yet also of complicity, for we are all, in one way or another, marked by a bad story we refuse to rewrite. General Irabor has done very well by writing a book that has provoked a discourse. We wait for others.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Hobbes, Nigeria, And Sarkozy

The Generals who spoke were very eloquent on the scars of Boko Haram. Did I not hear excuses for what the terrorists do and why they do them? One of the Generals even said “they (Boko Haram) never said book is haram.” Valuable minutes were spent doing definition of terms. Is that also a solution to the problem? They said so much but I didn’t hear a word from the Generals on the millions of out-of-school children who feed the machinery of terrorism and banditry. Today, Nigeria has an estimated 20 million out-of-school children, the highest number in the world. Read United Nations’ records: More than 60 percent of these children are in the northern states; they are the almajiri; the system is there till tomorrow; entrenched.

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Was it not General Obasanjo who wrote in one of his books that “our fingers will not be dry of blood” as long as lice abound in our clothes? I agree with him.
Because we are a dirty, contaminated nation, lice keep laying their nits in the seams of our garments. The line of Boko Haram lice is lengthened daily by mass child illiteracy and adult disillusionment. Our Generals would not acknowledge that the poverty of our streets is both symptom and scar: proof of the violence of neglect and the betrayal of the future. They, and we, still do not see that in every Almajiri begging for miserable morsels of leftovers, the nation’s unhealed wounds find new violence and new weapons.

Then, there is Bishop Kukah’s jarring charge that marabouts have become a substitute for government and governing. He hinted that we’ve outsourced the leadership of the nation to some “blind clerics” somewhere. That statement should strike a chord with all who heard him. But because it is true, all who heard it pretended it was not said.

The Bishop was on solid ground when he uttered what he said. The proofs are everywhere: In August 2015, the Adamawa State government announced that it had earmarked N200 million to engage prayer warriors against Boko Haram. In March 2016, a certain Aminu Baba-Kusa, once a powerful executive director of the NNPC, appeared before the High Court in Abuja with a witness statement and disclosed in it that a total of ₦2.2 billion was expended, not for arms or intelligence, but for prayers, solemnly commissioned to hasten the fall of Boko Haram. The money went out in two waves: ₦1.45 billion first, then another ₦750 million. It was a contract sanctified by faith and sealed by silence.

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Nothing that has happened in the last ten years suggests a change of strategy. Marabouts still cash out from a mugu nation and a leadership that worships in unworthy shrines. Kukah stepped on toes; he said the manipulation of religion for politics, using religion to enforce power, has become destructive to religion in northern Nigeria. It took remarkable episcopal courage for Kukah to say publicly that northern politicians use Islam for political cash-out. I watched the Sultan, calm and angry at Bishop Kukah for daring to stray away from the book he was asked to review into a realm angels fear to tread. As the Sultan spoke, the TV man’s camera panned to a defiant Kukah fiddling with a piece of pamphlet.

Speaker after speaker spoke on what they thought caused insecurity in northern Nigeria. I waited in vain to hear the Generals acknowledge that northern children, denied books and purpose, are the soldiers of chaos in Zamfara, Sokoto, Niger and, now in Kwara. In vain I listened to hear the truth from our Generals that today’s violent elements, products of a past of negligence, are proof that unattended scars can erupt again in new forms of pain.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: On El-Rufai, Aláròká And Terrorists

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Our Generals are searching for what is not lost. The spring head of terror and terrorism in northern Nigeria is the wrong religious philosophy which atrophies millions of children. Every child anywhere, including in northern Nigeria, wants and deserves what General Obasanjo called “better life.” A child who has opportunities for self-discovery and development won’t be readily available for employment by merchants of terror. Terrorism will dry out the moment its recruitment market winds up. Educating the street children of the North, and equipping them with the right skills will sound the death knell of Boko Haram and banditry, its brethren. But this is where even the Generals feared to tread last Friday. They were afraid of the clerics in whose hands lie the yam and the knife of power and privileges.

The people who spoke at that event were not up to ten. Several scores of other big men and women were there, silent and quiet, sometimes clapping. They either did not have the chance to be called to speak or they did not want to speak and be quoted into trouble. But, really, what is trouble? Trouble can sneak into the hole of silence. Jeff T. Johnson writes in his ‘Trouble Songs’ that “Trouble may appear in a title and disappear in a song,” and “’Trouble’ may sneak up in a song without warning.”

Trouble is Nigeria, the sick, denying its illness. Real trouble is homicidal or suicidal silence; it is treating eczema when leprosy is the ailment.

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So, at the risk of courting abuse and insults and threats, I join Bishop Kukah in urging Nigeria to stop keeping quiet in the face of evil. Enough of saying that you do not want to ruffle feathers or open old wounds. Wounds that refuse to heal should be opened and given the right medicine. That is what heals.

A broken nation, sworn to silence, or to denial of truth, hurtles down a roller coaster of failure. Silence scars with ugly gashes. Screaming within, yet saying nothing out is sickness. The Yoruba say silence is the foundation of misfortune. Speaking out does not mean you will die young, broke and broken. Not speaking out when you have a voice is no guarantee for safety and comfort. Bishop Kukah’s Hausa proverb is the ultimate counsel here: “Not going to the toilet does not mean you won’t be hungry.”

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Group Defends VC Selection At FUGUS, Alleges Sabotage By Petitioners

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A Civil society organisation, Kwararafa League for Good Governance has raised the alarm over what it described as a coordinated attempt to undermine the ongoing process of appointing a new Vice Chancellor at the Federal University, Gusau (FUGUS), Zamfara State.

In a strongly worded petition addressed to the Honourable Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, the group condemned a recent lawsuit filed at the National Industrial Court, Abuja, by three academic staff of the university, namely Professors Ahmad Galadima, Ibrahim Garba Zurmi, and Dr. Anas Sani Anka, against the university’s Governing Council and Management.

The petitioners had challenged the Council’s adoption of a minimum of ten (10) years post-professorial experience as requirement for applicants vying for the position of Vice Chancellor, a criterion they argued was designed to disqualify certain candidates.

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In a counter petition to the education minister, the Kwararafa League insisted that the criterion was valid and aligns with directives issued by the Federal Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission (NUC), particularly a pronouncement made by the Minister in May 2025, which emphasises on adherence to this standard by all university councils.

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It is important to note that for the fact that some universities refused to abide by the directive does not make it legal or constitutional,” the group stated in the petition signed by its coordinator, Samuel Bature.

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The group also accused the petitioners of pursuing selfish agenda and attempting to destabilize the institution.

They alleged that the Pro-Chancellor, Hon. Aminu Sani Isaac, may have prior connections to one of the claimants who reportedly received informal assurances of being appointed Vice Chancellor despite not meeting the advertised requirements.

Describing the lawsuit as “baseless and malicious,” the group maintained that the university has operated in full compliance with applicable laws and guidelines, and called on the minister not to recognise or support the ongoing legal challenge.

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This representation is made in good faith, as a body committed to fairness, justice, and the development of education in Nigeria,” the petition stated.

The League also urged the Minister to direct the University’s Governing Council to take disciplinary action against the trio involved in the litigation, citing their actions as detrimental to the peace and credibility of the university system.

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Copies of the petition were also sent to the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), the President of the National Industrial Court, and the Pro-Chancellor of FUGUS.

As the legal and administrative battle continues, stakeholders in the education sector await the ministry’s response and the final outcome of the Vice Chancellor selection process.

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Oba of Benin Renews Bond With Ancestral Relations, Nigerians During Emorhọ Feast

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The palace of the Oba of Benin was agog with activities during the 2025 Emorhọ fest, declared by Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku, Uku Akpolokpolo, Ewuare II, Oba of Benin as part of activities to mark the ancient Emorhọ, otherwise known as the ‘New Yam Festival’.

Oba of Benin, who reenacted the age-long festival, renewed the bond that exist between him and his ancestral relations from Issele-Uku in Aniocha North Local Government Area of Delta State at the event, which attracted dignitaries, including Benin people, indigenes and non-indigenes across Edo State.

Members of the Benin Royal family, Edionwere (village heads), youth leaders across the various communities in Benin, market women group, palace chiefs, traditional priests and priestesses in Benin, were also in attendance.

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READ ALSO:Oba Of Benin Declares Two-week Fasting, Prayer For Edo

A special prayer offered on behalf of the palace by Chief Enorense Ozigbo-Esere, the Osuma of Benin, paved the way for the commencement of the feast, where Secretary to the Benin Traditional Council, Frank Irabor, welcomed guests and highlighted the essence of the gathering.

Speaking in an interview, Oba Ewuare younger ancestral relations from Issele-Uku led by Chief Michael Odiakosa, expressed delight for the privilege to be part of the historic celebration.

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He explained the relationship between Benin and Issele-Uku, reaffirming that, “Issele-Uku is an extension of Benin Kingdom. We are all descendants of Benin. So, we are at home”.

READ ALSO:Oba Of Benin Ushers In ‘Emorọ’

We are in a safe place. We came to celebrate the festival with our father, the Omo N’ Oba, and we are happy to be here”, Odiakosa said.

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On his part, 99-year-old Pa. Paul Osarumwense Oyemwen, the Odionwere of Orior-Ozolua community in Uhunmwode LGA who thanked the Oba for the gesture, said the festival is not new in Benin and it’s devoid of sacrifices.

Expressing her appreciation to the Oba of Benin, the ‘Edo markets leader’, Pastor (Mrs) Josephine Ibhaguezejele, noted that members of the group have been waiting anxiously for the opportunity to partake in the yearly festival, while praying God that the blessings of the festival to transform lives.

Also speaking, Pa. Daniel Osunde, the Odionwere of Idumwun-owina, N’ Iyeke-orhiomwon, also prayed for the Oba and thanked the first Class traditional ruler for his foresight.

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Excited guests in their numbers were fed with African delicacy, amid dancing and jubilation, while members of Isikhian women group who gave a good account of their stewardship, were not left out in the celebration by the Oba who rewarded them with cash gift and other items in acknowledgement their duties in Benin.

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