The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, on Thursday said examination malpractice is akin to corruption and the Federal Government would soon tackle the menace in the country.
Mr Adamu gave the assurance at the maiden edition of a two-day West Africa Examination Council, WAEC’s International Summit on Examination Malpractice in Lagos.
The summit was tagged: “Examination Malpractice: The Contemporary Realities and Antidotes.’’
The minister, represented by Mohammed Kaarege, the Director, Basic and Secondary Education, Federal Ministry of Education, said that examination malpractice was a form of corruption, which the Federal Government had vowed to eradicate.
Mr Adamu said government was worried with the increasing rate of examination fraud, which he said, was affecting the quality of education in the country.
According to him, students and their collaborators have devised various means of examination malpractice, worsened with the advent of the social media.
“The two-day summit is to provide examination bodies with measures and innovation to turn public examination into a fraud-free examination.
“Nigeria in particular, and I think government of other sub-regions in Africa, are determined to eradicate corruption of which examination malpractice is a form of corruption,’’ the minister said.
The minister said all levels of education in West African coast were affected by the menace.
He said that the Federal Government’s focus was on the training and retraining of teachers and encouragement of other member countries to intensify in the training of teachers.
Also, the Chairperson of WAEC, Evelyn Kandakai, urged stakeholders in the education sector to collaborate with the council to fight against the menace.
Mrs Kandakai said that WAEC had intensified its fight against examination fraud through collaboration with other stakeholders.
“Schools, society and WAEC are all suspects and examination malpractice has been a major distraction to the examination body,’’ she said.
According to her, all stakeholders must rise to kill examination malpractice before it kills education in the sub-region, because the dearth of education is a dearth of a nation.
NAN
