Over five million unclaimed certificates of candidates, who sat for the West African Examinations Council and the General Certificate of Education decades ago, have been abandoned at WAEC offices across the country, our correspondent has gathered.
Insider sources hinted that large number of the WAEC certificates were abandoned by their owners for various reasons.
It was discovered that many of the certificates had been gathering dust on the shelves in WAEC offices and many secondary schools and colleges in the country for over 30 years, apparently because their owners did not come forward to claim them, perhaps, as a result of their poor performance, when they sat for the examinations.
“It goes without saying that poor performance resulting from lack of adequate preparations on the part of the candidates were partly responsible, while others might have died before or after the release of their results.
But what we know for certain is that poor results /judgements were largely responsible, even when WAEC’s tradition of posting results to candidates was still the order of the day”, a source said.
Yearly, millions of Nigerians sit for either WAEC/ GCE as a prerequisite for gaining admission into any of the universities in the country, be it private or public,as candidates seeking admission into any university must have five credits at either one or two sittings.
Candidates must also go through the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board and pass the prescribed papers.
Few years back, the National Examinations Council, popularly called NECO, was added to the WAEC/ GCE examinations.
Meanwhile, further investigations have revealed that top officials of WAEC have devised scientific means of keeping records of those who sat for the examinations, no matter how long ago such candidates sat for the papers.
”We have a way of checking through records; which is why we run compartmentalised sort of operations. The Investigations Department at Yaba, Lagos, has a way of doing this because we have seasoned officers there with track records of achievements. Now, with a mere click of the mouse, we are there”, the source added.
An official of the examination body confirmed that there were a lot of such abandoned certificates in almost all the WAEC offices across the country awaiting collection by their individual owners.
A source added that WAEC does not have a tradition of destroying such unclaimed certificates.
“Certificates are of historical and sentimental values. We do not destroy them because, they have life,” he said.
However, WAEC Deputy Director, at Yaba office, Damian……said it may be difficult to ascertain the number of unclaimed certificates since WAEC had newly been centralised. He however promised to get to our correspondent.
