Friday, March 29, 2024

2018 WASSCE: How our proprietors, friends introduced us to ‘magic’ sites – Candidates

  • It’s difficult to leak our papers – NECO

Despite the efforts being made by the major school certificate examination body, the West African Examinations Council, against the incidence of examination malpractices in Nigeria, candidates have continued to expose sad loopholes in the country’s education system.

Findings by The Point revealed that the ongoing 2018 examinations have been fraught with large scale cheating as the culprits now opt for paying some unscrupulous online sites with recharge cards to obtain answers for the examination questions in the various subjects, despite the fact that most of the loopholes in the past appeared to have been blocked by WAEC.

Our school also mandated our science teachers to stay with us in school for two days. We were taken through the steps to the experiments from solutions on special websites, and they were the answers. But I did not tell my friends from other schools

These online sites, it was learnt, require students to send N400 recharge card to enable them to have access to the various questions and answers of the subjects they are writing, in real time. Also, with a subscription of N800, the answers are sent directly to their phones, while with N400, the candidates have to go online to get their ready-made answers.

One of the candidates, who claimed to have engaged in the act in the ongoing WAEC examination, told our correspondent that he was introduced to the site by the proprietor of his school. He said he tested it and found out that it was real. The candidate, who resides in Alagbado, Lagos State, spoke on the condition of anonymity. 

“We were informed in my school by our proprietor to go online to get values for chemistry practical experiments, instead of our teachers doing the experiments with us and we did get the solutions. Though not all the sites are credible, some are because we were able to get the answers,” he said.

Another candidate, who also did not want his name mentioned, owing to the sensitivity of the issue, said he also benefitted from such sites.

“The questions are solved a day before each paper in Ghana. The answers are then sent to us from there,” the candidate, who is currently writing the WASSCE in the Ayobo area of Lagos, said.

A 15-year-old candidate, who is writing the examination in SS2, claimed that the proprietor of her school asked the day students to stay in the hostel for the period of the examination so that they could pass at one-sitting.

The teenager, who attends a private secondary school in the Sango-Ota area of Ogun State, said,

“Our school also mandated our science teachers to stay with us in school for two days. We were taken through the steps to the experiments from solutions on special websites, and they were the answers. But I did not tell my friends from other schools.”

A physics teacher worried by the development, Mr. Itodo Samuel Anthony, who also teaches at Gateway Excel College, Otukpa in Benue State, told our correspondent that these sites always had all the examination papers and the answers to the questions, usually a day or two before the dates for writing them.

Some of such sites listed by the students include Examcrown.com, Exponet.com, Examsort.com and Gurus.com.

Recalling his experience, Anthony said, “I went to one of their sites yesterday at the risk of getting a heart attack, and lo and behold, in front of me were solutions to the physics paper students were sweating to write in the hall yesterday. The solutions were posted online on the 19th, a day before the examination.

“I found out that students typically have access to the solutions a few minutes to the commencement of the examination, of course, to make maximum sales as PINS could be shared if the answers were released earlier. Several of these students still need the cooperation of their invigilators and their schools to use their phones in the examination halls to access the answers, while others take advantage of large examination centres to do their thing surreptitiously. Visit one of these sites and see how so damn easy it is to pass. It breaks my heart as a teacher.

“What baffles me is that these unscrupulous sites are doing advertisements, competing for patronage like other legitimate businesses. On these sites are the testimonies of Nigerian students such as ”Thank you for making me pass,” and “God bless you for saving me.” I just saw the testimony of a student on Exam crown website, who got 7A1 and a B3 from using their service.”

A concerned parent, who spoke to our correspondent on the condition of anonymity, noted that last year, those sites basically “insulted” the National Examinations Council as the body’s questions were posted online two days before the examination date. The sites gave the candidates answers to the NECO question papers free of charge.

He lamented, “It is so bad that when WAEC sends teachers’ specimen list 10 days before the examination dates, these guys have them online weeks before that day. See what education in our country has been reduced to. Why will our students read when they can pass with N400 recharge cards? Why will they not laugh at the teachers that try to make them study hard?

“The rot in education is particularly sad because it has ripple effects, spreading across all sectors. Imagine students using these sites to get eight distinctions and 330 in JAMB so that they can go on to study Medicine and Surgery and become doctors. Imagine such students wanting to become engineers, scientists, lawyers etc. They would most likely have to oil their way through school and come out deficient in whatever fields they find themselves, even with such great results.

“Our examination bodies should not just turn deaf ears to these situation our students are in. We want something to be done such that the phone numbers these recharge cards are sent to are tracked and if possible shut down somehow.”

The Head, Information Unit, NECO, Mr. Abdul-Azeez  Sanni, noted that the examination body was aware of the unscrupulous online sites and most of them defraud the unsuspecting candidates.

Sanni said, “We are aware that such sites are operating, but all along, they are defrauding  potential candidates because last year, they tried to do that but at the end of the day, the candidates found out that all the expo questions and answers that were posted online were not actually our genuine questions.

“With the mechanism NECO has put in place, it is difficult for our questions to get to the public before the actual examination day. We do daily distribution of question and answer sheets for our examinations and that is the very day the exam will hold. So, it is difficult for anybody to claim that he or she has access to our question papers before the day of the examination
itself.

“Some of the logistics arrangement by our team are put in place to block all these loopholes. We know that some of these sites exist, as it has been mentioned to us. Last year, there were like three or four of them, but at the end of the day, when we verified, we found out that all the NECO questions they claimed to have were not genuine.”

But efforts by our correspondent to reach the WAEC Public Relations Officer, Mr. Demianus Ojijegwu, for his reaction to the development, proved abortive.

His phone was not available as at the time of filing this report and he did not reply text messages sent to him, too.

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