Adamu Adamu, Nigeria’s Minister of Education, says examination bodies in the country could win the war against examination malpractices if they deploy ICT and also build a multi-dimensional approach to address the menace.
“Examination malpractices is a major problem affecting the conduct of public exams in Nigeria, and let me say that Nigeria is underdeveloped in tackling issues of malpractices in our exams,” the Minister said during a programme on Lagos.
Adamu spoke at the opening of a one-day National Sensitization Workshop on Malpractice in Nigeria jointly organised by the National Examinations Council (NECO and the National Assembly).
Represented by Prof Ishaq Oloyede, the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), he said the weaponising of exams to candidates is an unfair assessment because Nigeria is underdeveloped in tackling issues of examination malpractices.
“ICT is the way to go in curbing this menace it has become most critical that we must adopt we must become creative in adopting ICT devices to protect the sanctity of our examinations across Nigeria.”
Andrew Adejo, the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, charged the National Assembly to enact laws for sanctions on consequent actions.
He noted complexities arise following the loss of core values in Nigerian societies,” because we have forgotten our value system, they have collapsed, and until we fix this, it may take a long time before the system recovers we should look at the ways of correcting our value system.”
Earlier in his welcome address, Prof Dantani Ibrahim Wushishi, the Registrar of NECO, noted that the major challenge facing the conduct of public examinations remains issues of examination malpractice.
He also said that the workshop was jointly organised with the National Assembly to address issues of exam malpractice.
Wushishi added that it is to find ways and means that can be adopted to curb the menace and re-orient the minds of the youths concerning the cankerworm.
“No doubt, examination malpractice tends to discourage hard work among serious students, lowers educational standards, discredit certificates, and lead to the production of quacks, thereby affecting the manpower needs of the nation.”
He called for collective responsibility to rid them of the bad habit of wanting to cut corners.
The Head of WAEC Nigeria, Patrick Areghan, represented by Dr Amos Dani, commended NECO for advancing assessment to a greater level.
He applauded the role of the National Assembly in tackling the examination malpractices menace.
Areghan disclosed that WAEC had begun the deployment of technology in the fight against exam infractions.
” WAEC has developed a technology called IDP to detect collisions in the objectives segment of our exams other technologies are being currently developed to tackle malpractices in our essay papers.”
