[September 15, 2011] WAEC's Conflicting Results - Minister Blames Confusion on Lack of Communication Tweet Sep 15, 2011 (Vanguard/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- THE confusion caused by two contradictory results which West African Examinations Council (WAEC) released in respect of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination, WASSCE May/June 2011 was due to lack of communication, so declared the Minister of State for Education, Barrister Nyesom Wike. Commenting on the mix-up of the WAEC results of which one was released on August 10, 2011 and another almost three weeks later, causing panic, apprehension among students, parents and stakeholders, he absolved WAEC from any deliberate act of manipulation or corruption. "When WAEC released two conflicting results, I called the Head of Nigeria Office to hear from him because it is a big embarrassment to the nation." Speaking with education journalists in Abuja at an interactive session, Wike said that he asked WAEC to tell the nation what happened, after hearing the explanation given by the examination body. "It's lack of communication. There was no deliberate attempt to circumvent anything, but lack of communication is the problem." He was of the view that had WAEC properly communicated with the public and explained the situation, the tension and panic would have been avoided. With the lack of communication, the minister said, "people will have the impression that something wrong is going on." Apart from the result released on August 10, 2011 which appeared on the council's website, later, another conflicting results were posted on the same website. In its own explanation, WAEC had said the WASSCE May/June 2011 results were released with some pending/outstanding results. "Subsequently, there was need to update some outstanding results. However, due to human error traced to some staff, the result update altered the already released results. According to the statement issued by the Deputy Director, Public Affairs, WAEC, Mr. Y,.D. Ari, stakeholders were assured that WAEC does not 'upgrade' results as has been reported and therefore the results remained as they were released on August 10, 2011. Ari went on to say that the officers connected with the error would be appropriately sanctioned. Head of WAEC National Office, Dr. Iyi Uwadiae, at a news briefing, reportedly accepted blame for the mix-up of results caused by yet-to-be-identified staff members. Saying that posting the two versions of results on the council's website was a human error, he added that an investigative panel has been set up to unravel how it happened. Uwadiae reaffirmed that the result released on August 10, 2011, remained the authentic nd certified results, not minding protests by candidates that they have printed the second result deemed as the latest version and sent same to universities for consideration as regards admission. Summoned to Abuja by Wike to tell the nation what happened, the WAEC chief did not mince words when he said it was not an issue of a hacker neither is it an issue of a WAEC worker trying to upgrade the score of a particular candidate. "I discovered that there was a problem when we were updating during subsequent uploading caused by somebody yet-to-be-identified. We want to know what happened between the time the quality control people did their work on the authentic result and the time the one that was not quality-checked was uploaded on the website." He added: "We have to know what happened, whether it was a programme error or a system failure or it was as a result of incompetence or as a result of dereliction of duty. We want to know at what point the other person, who picked the non-quality checked or unedited file uploaded." One of the stakeholders who spoke with Vanguard Education expressed the hope that the panel set up by WAEC will be able to reveal those who caused the mix-up. The Minister of State for Education was commended for his prompt intervention by summoning WAEC to clarify what happened as this was not the first time contradictory results were released by the council. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]