Gombe students lament inability to access WASSCE results over unpaid exam fees

THE secondary school students who sat for the May/June 2014 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in Gombe State yesterday expressed sadness that after the results were released by the examination body, they are yet to access theirs. They attributed this to the state government’s inability to pay their examination fees.

Lamenting their ordeal to newsmen yesterday, one of the students, Ahmed Ishaq Usaman, who sat for the exam at the Government Day Secondary School in Gombe, said: "It was after we finished writing the examinations we heard that the state government did not pay for our WAEC.

"This really broke our hearts. Is it because our parents are not well to do? After all, the children of government officials and all well-to-do citizens of this country are schooling abroad yet, common WAEC registration fee cannot be paid for those of us in public schools."

Also, another student, Ibrahim Nasiru Jalo of Government Day Secondary School, Gandu, said: "When we heard that WAEC has released results for May/June 2014 WASSCE, which I wrote, we couldn’t access our own results and the explanation we got was that the Gombe State government was yet to pay for the exam so WAEC refused to release our results for us."

In an attempt to speak with the state Commissioner for Education, Aisha Ahmed, she told The Guardian on phone that she was attending a meeting in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

In the same vein, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education could not be reached for comment, but an official of the ministry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, expressed dismay at the state government’s refusal to fulfil its promise to the out-gone students.

He said: "It is better for the state government to stop deceiving the public because this would not have happened if our government has not promised to foot the WAEC bill of these students."

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