The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has accepted responsibility for the release of two different results on its website which threw candidates who sat for the Senior School Certificate Examination of May/June in a state of confusion last weekend.
WAEC had released the first result on August 10 where it said only 472,906 candidates representing 31 per cent obtained five credits including Mathematics and English.

But, owing to “human error” as described by the Head of the WAEC National Office Dr. Iyi Uwadiae another result that was not “quality checked by Quality Control Department” was released on its website on August 26.

He said the system was not hacked and it was not a mischievous act by WAEC.

After the release of the second results, students were graded differently from the first result issued on August 10.
Some parents had even gone ahead to send the results to institutions they wanted their children admitted to.

Since then a panel has been set up to investigate the matter which is expected to submit its report and recommendations to the governing board of WAEC.

Explaining how the error occurred, Dr. Uwadiae said at a press briefing convened by the Minister of State for Education Barr. Nyesom Wike in Abuja yesterday, that after releasing the first result on August 10, the examination body went on to resolve queries which involved results that could not be released then due to errors during registration and examinations.

It then started updating the first batch of results with some earlier withheld results after successfully resolving their queries.

He said it was in this process of upgrading and uploading that another result was posted on the website.

“On regular basis we update until we are able to release all the results that we can release. This is because we still have very few that we cannot release. For example a candidate that never gave his or her name or examination number, WAEC cannot conjure these numbers or names. In the process of updating because we have to do that on a regular basis because we know the students need them so even if it is two we are able to resolve in a day, we post it. We upload it to the website to allow candidates have access to their results. In the course of doing this upgrading and uploading on regular basis something happened,” he explained.


He said during his preliminary investigation he discovered that during the updating and uploading, somebody yet to be identified used a wrong procedure and uploaded the result that was not quality checked.

The WAEC head however said the result on the website is currently the authentic result initially posted on August 10.

The Minister Barr Wike said since WAEC had committed an error of publishing conflicting results which some parents had already sent to the universities, it should endeavor to send the initial results to all universities so they can easily verify.

He also asked WAEC to issue a release after it concludes its internal investigation so the public would be aware of how the matter was released.




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