Zamfara Uncovers Inflation in Payment of WAEC/NECO Fees

The committee set up by the Zamfara State government to establish
the number of students sitting for the WAEC and NECO examinations in the
state’s public schools has discovered that the payment is being inflated with
2,300 external candidates.
The state Commissioner for Education, Alhaji Mukhtar Lugga, disclosed this in
an interview with Daily Trust in Gusau yesterday, saying students were being
“recycled”.
“What I mean by recycling is that a student would fail examination this year
and he would bounce back to the school the following year on payment of some
amount to some principals. At the end, government would pay for candidates
that are not in the schools’ roll call and this is costing us a lot”, he said.
He added that the head count conducted in the schools uncovered how some
heads of secondary schools were inflating the names in the payment rolls of
students largely for personal gains.

“One of these principals has confessed to us that he added about 60 names in
his school. He said he didn’t do it for personal gains but due to pressures from
the host community. But what we discovered is that they do collect N8,000
from each of the external candidates and the burden of the payment is shifted
to the government”, he added.
He further said the ministry had taken the comprehensive list of the current SS2
students so that no name would be added to it during the registration in the
coming year as part of measures to check the fraud.
“The state government has paid over N900m for settlement of the 2014 and
2015 WAEC and NECO fees and students can access their results online”, he
said.
The president, All Nigerian Confederation of Principals of Secondary Schools
(ANCOPSS) in the state, Alhaji Ashiru Yahaya Maru, said they had nothing to
say about the allegation but lamented the annual increase in fees by the
examination bodies.