States owe WAEC N3bn for examination registration

THE multi-million naira credit facility extended to state governments in the country by the West African Examination Council (WAEC), during the last West African Senior School Certificate, has seen the body labour under a ₦3 billion debt yoke courtesy of the benefitting states.

This amount owed by about 10 states, led to a situation, where the outfit had to resort to the acquisition of bank loans to discharge some of its basic functions, even though some of the states are currently defraying their indebtedness.

Making the disclosure to The Guardian in an interview, Head of Office (HNO) WAEC Nigeria, Mr. Charles Eguridu, expressed joy that some of the defaulting states were doing the needful thereby giving the agency a breather.

Last week, the Borno State Government appealed to WAEC, and the National Examination Council (NECO), to release the results of its candidates who sat for the 2014 examinations.

Permanent Secretary in the state’s Education Ministry, Mohammed Kauji, while making the appeal in Maiduguri, said that the state had cleared all the outstanding registration fees for the candidates who sat for the examinations in the state and expressed dismay over the inability of the candidates to access their results since it was released.

He said, “I want to plead with both WAEC and NECO to release the result of Borno State candidates, who sat for the 2014 examinations. This is because the state government had on September 29 cleared all outstanding fees relating to the examinations. We were surprised to hear that the results of our candidates were not displayed on the website of both WAEC and NECO even after making all the payments.

“The situation has created anxiety among the candidates and their parents as they tried to access the results in vain,” he said.

But the HNO who informed that the indebtedness has reasonably decreased, wondered why a state government would release a cheque to defray its indebtedness “only to go to the media 12 hours later to claim it was without indebtedness, even when the cheque release was yet to be cleared in the bank.

“For us, it is a normal thing to give states credit facilities to register their candidates because we expect them to pay up soon after the registration. But because a lot of them have issues with release of funds, appropriation and all that, it becomes difficult for them to pay up on time.

“At a point, all the debtor states were owing WAEC about N3 billion. As an organisation, we need money to function. And because of the indebtedness, we have to take loans from banks to pay the examiners to mark the papers as paying our staff was becoming a problem. When we take loans from banks, we have to pay the interest that accrues because the examination papers must be marked, and we cant come up to tell Nigerians that we could not mark examination papers because state governments are owing us. They will see us as irresponsible. So we want to fulfill our obligation first to Nigerians and then sought ourselves out with the state governments later.”

Cross River State government was indebted to WAEC to the tune of over N300 million for 2013 and 2014 WAEC examination fees. The state government has been paying WAEC fees for candidates since 2008 as part of its educational development policy.

Asked to name the debtor states and their debt profile, Eguridu declined preferring to handle the issue this way.

“I can confirm to you that Borno State had issues with payment, but the results for the state has now been released. I can’t confirm outright if Cross River State has paid up. But I can tell you that some states are paying up. In fact, as at Thursday last week, I got a report that Kebi, Sokoto, Borno and Akwa Ibom states have also paid up. So, I will advise those states that are still owing to come forward and pay up so that the results of their candidates would be released.

“When the results were ready, we wrote to them to come and pay up, but they kept delaying. So the only thing we could do was to hold on to the results because if we had released the result, they may end up not paying. Being politicians, some of whom are even campaigning, they may lose elections and the new government may tell you right away that they don’t have anything to do with what you are talking about.

On why the examination body has not considered registering the candidates for the examination only after their state governments have paid up fully, Eguridu said, “Many indigent parents cannot afford to pay examination fees, that is why the state governments took over. So if we decline giving them this credit facility, it is the innocent students that would suffer because they would be put in disadvantaged positions. Since the states have taken over this responsibility, we should not deny these underprivileged children the opportunity of writing their examinations and keeping their careers on track. So, we are prepared to suffer a little injustice than to put any Nigerian child at a disadvantage,” Eguridu stated.

In fact, any state that is still having issues accessing the result of its candidates up till this moment, owes WAEC registration fees because it is illogical to cease the result of an entire state.

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