WAEC and its debtor states

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THE characteristic sloppy approach to governance, especially in areas that border on citizens’ welfare and wellbeing, would appear to be intensifying in the Nigerian education sector. And that is worrisome, as such a development has the potential to imperil the future of the society. For instance, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has reportedly withheld the results of students from eight states of the federation who sat the 2023 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) due to the governments’ indebtedness to the Council. As it stands, the affected students do not have access to the results, let alone using them to process admission into higher institutions, amongst other purposes. It is difficult to fathom the raison d’etre for this sordid state of affairs as the state governments must have, of their own volition, caused the students to be registered for the examination. And most likely, many of the leaders of the affected subnational governments would have received accolades from their citizens for applying part of the states’ resources to a laudable cause. Some of them might even have extracted some political capital from what has now turned out be a dishonest exercise as they ended up failing the students, disappointing their parents, betraying and vitiating the trust of the citizenry in government.

This sour turn of events, which is not alien to this country, necessarily raises a litany of general and specific questions. Why are those in charge of public affairs always lethargic and insensitive to the aspirations of the citizenry? Why are they conducting state affairs in such a filthy and grossly incompetent manner? What do they make of the reprehensible acts they unleash on hapless Nigerians almost everyday? And what and how do they want the hapless citizens bearing the unending brunt of their rapacious acts to feel, as those acts continuously make a mess of their life and living conditions? These are the general questions that will keep popping up in reasonable minds regarding the states that have failed to pay their candidates’ registration fees. The situation promises to impact the affected students’ life in a significantly negative fashion if remedial actions are not quickly taken. How could any government worth a modicum of its name not pay for the examinations its students sat, and for which it had earlier committed to paying? Is it that the examinations ought to be free?

Did the states not realise that the students, after six years in secondary school, would sit examinations to complete their schooling at that level and prepare for other things in life? What exactly are those governments thinking? Apparently, they are content with paying lip service to issues pertaining to the welfare of the citizenry while dipping their hands in the common till to fund their flamboyant lifestyle. Have they forgotten that WAEC is not a state-owned institution to which they could extend their characteristic sharp practices that often result in inefficiency and/or early mortality of many public organisations in this clime? Indeed, the conduct of the eight states beggars belief and smacks of official disdain for children and youth development in the states.

Also, it is instructive that the Head of National Office ( HNO) of WAEC in Nigeria, Patrick Areghan, in a press release, readily mentioned Zamfara and Niger states as the highest debtors even as he was reluctant to name the other indebted states and the amounts they owe. For the WAEC official to have treated the two states in isolation and in such an unflattering manner, they must have consistently failed to honour their obligations. Sadly, Zamfara also reportedly failed to present any candidate for this year’s WASSCE, and it is unclear how the state will ever bridge the yawning education gap between it and other states of the federation, especially in the South. It is not really astonishing, albeit painful and worrying, that these two states stand out amongst the debtor states as their status is an eloquent testament to the valuation they are known to have placed on education over time. And their poor ranking amongst the other states of the federation in terms of formal education and other Human Development Indices (HDI) is a reflection of this lackadaisical and pernicious tendency to treat human capital development, which necessarily starts with sound education, very lightly.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that these states are among those most significantly impacted by the deleterious activities of violent non-state actors probably driven into engaging in nefarious, precipitate and asocial actions out of ignorance, poverty and joblessness. Ironically, these are three inter-related socioeconomic challenges that sound formal education is best suited to rein in. We, therefore, enjoin the affected state governments to prioritise and settle their indebtedness to WAEC without further delay. They should not mortgage the future of the students. Many of the students could have written the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), awaiting their WAEC results for admission into tertiary institutions.

The greatest weapon against ignorance and poverty is formal education. Governments at all levels should be playing, and be seen to be playing, the role of the most prominent facilitator of the realization of children, youth, and indeed every citizen’s potential, including educational attainments. They should not be seen to be doing the obverse, as the eight states whose students’ WASSCE results are currently being withheld have painfully demonstrated. Again, there is no gainsaying that a higher percentage of the violent outlaws in this country are mostly uneducated, barely educated and idle citizens. It is, therefore, unconscionable for anyone, group, institution or government at any level to be seen as wittingly or unwittingly increasing the population of uneducated people in the society. That is patently counterproductive. It is against this backdrop that we strongly urge urgent remedial action and positive change on the part of the delinquent states. The object is to avert the looming disaster which the increasingly shrinking space and diminution of opportunity for formal education in the affected states could bring.

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