One point six million candidates are billed to sit for this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination, WASSCE, which starts Monday, ends twenty-third June.

According to the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, 1,621,853 candidates across 20,851 government and private schools registered for the examination.

Its Head of National Office, Patrick Areghan, at a pre-examination briefing noted the candidature for the 2023 WASSCE increased by 13, 868 compared to the 1,607,985 candidates who registered in 2022.

Areghan said though not compulsory, the National Identification Number (NIN) was a component of the registration requirements.

He added that no candidate was disqualified from registration as a result of non-submission of NIN at the beginning of the exercise, or, even later.

Areghan decried non-adherence to the registration deadline by private schools who were in the habit of shopping for external candidates to make up numbers, contrary to the policy which does not allow the enrolment of private candidates for the examination.

According to him, Registration started on the 10th of October, 2022 with a set deadline of January 27, 2023, and eventually extended to March 31, 2023. It could not even end due to the shenanigans of some private schools, entries eventually closed on April 15, 2023,”.

Areghan maintained the zero-tolerance stance of the council towards all forms of examination malpractice, adding that penalties for involvement in examination malpractice will always be meted out to erring candidates, invigilators, supervisors, schools, WAEC officials, as would be approved by the Nigeria Examinations Committee (NEC), the highest decision-making organ of the council on examination matters in the country.

He also said the council’s Candidate Self-Service/Chatbot would allow students to confirm data uploaded for them by schools to make necessary corrections on such data.