Kwara State Commissioner for Education and Human Capital Development, Dr Lawal Olohungbebe, has said that the delay in commencement of the English Essay paper in the West Africa Senior Shool Certificate Examination was not the making of Kwara government.
Reacting to the delay in commencement of the Essay paper of the examination on Wednesday in Ilorin, Olohungbebe said that the examination body, WAEC, saw the need to reprint the question paper.
The commissioner said ”WASSCE is not a state-organised examination and when we discovered that the question papers didn’t arrive on time, we called and were intimated with the situation of things.
”The papers arrived in Kwara past 4p.m. which depicted why they started the examination late in all the centres.
”It is an unusual occurrence and we have never had a situation like this.
“The only support we could give to the federal government was to allow the examination hold unhindered,” he said.
However, parents have expressed displeasure at the late commencement of the English Essay paper, which was scheduled to have been held in the morning.
Some of the parents said the examination body should have postponed the examination to a later date instead of endangering the lives of the students.
Mrs Banke Oluwole, whose child was still in the examination hall as at 8:30 p.m., said though her son had called earlier to inform her that he would arrive home late, she couldn’t sit back at home to wait for him.
”My son is still writing English paper at St. Barnabas Secondary school, and I have to come down to wait for him, so that we will go home together.
”I cannot allow him to come home alone considering the security problems we have in the country.
”WAEC should have looked for another alternative instead of making them go through this stress,” she said.
Another parent, Mrs Omowumi Oladipo, whose child wrote the examination at Mercy Group of Schools, said that she was already agitated when her daughter did not arrive home on time.
Oladipo said that she got home from school at some minutes after 8p.m.
”These are the kind of things we should consider before we start lamenting that the students didn’t pass or there was mass failure,” she said.
Another parent of a student in St. Joseph Centenary College, Mr Philips James, said it was unfortunate that different crisis are bedevilling the education sector in the country with unusual happenings, making reference to the JAMB incident.
He advised examination regulatory bodies to ensure stricter measures to prevent a recurrence
According to him, things like this could affect the performance of the students.
