In order to reduce the problem of abandoned certificates, the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) is planning to deploy an Electronic Certificate Management System to facilitate the issuance of certificates.
The council’s Head, Public Affairs, Mr Demianus Ojijeogu disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday, December 13, 2018, in Lagos.
According to him, the online system will enable the council to print certificates of candidates only on request.
He said, “with this in place, it will assist the council in decongesting backlog of certificates lying fallow for several years with very few owners coming up to collect them.
“With this in place, any candidate that wants his or her result will go online to make a request and leave an address of where it would be delivered.
“It does not matter where they wrote the examination.
“The process has reached an advanced stage and hopefully, by 2019, the mechanism would be deployed.’’
Ojijeogwu said the electronic issuance of SSCE certificates became necessary due to the slow response by candidates in collecting their certificates several years after sitting for the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination.
He added that the exam body has been appealing to candidates to come for their certificates but their responses have been very slow.
“In 2014 alone, we placed several advertorials in some newspapers appealing with those concerned to come forward for their certificates as they are taking up too much space in our offices.
“We did need not get any meaningful response.
“Certificates as far back as 1980s are still lying fallow in our office with their owners not making attempt to come to collect them, moreover, the number will be staggering if we should put them together.
“Currently, the practice has been that if certificates should stay in our custody for more than four years, the owners will be charged with a custody fees of N5,000 on collection excluding the N3,500 for the collection of such certificate.’’
The Council's official, however, said that certificates of candidates who wrote the 2017 Nov/Dec WASSCE, Private, have since been printed and ready for collection in all the council’s offices across the country.
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