Miss Oluwanifemi Deborah Olowoyeye could not hide her joy as she sat browsing the internet at a business centre in Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, last Friday.
Initially, she couldn’t believe what she saw. Since January when she discovered that her 2008 May\June West African Senior Certificate Examination, WASCCE, result had been altered by the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, she had made browsing of WAEC website a duty. “I checked the website now and then as if that was the way to get my result revalidated because I couldn’t understand why the result, for the first instance, had to be tampered with eight years after it was released. So, the development appeared like a dream to me,” she said. Olowoyeye, a 20-year-old orphan sat for the 2008 May\June WASCCE and scored the following grades in seven subjects: Geography C4, English Language C6, Yoruba Language C5, Mathematics B3, Agricultural Science D7, Biology C5, Physics B3, Chemistry C4 and Economics C4.
Apart from the fact that she had printed a copy of the result online from the WAEC website like every other candidate does nowadays, she had equally collected her original certificate. With the brilliant results, she gained admission the following year into Ekiti State University, EKSU, Ado-Ekiti, to study Geography and Planning Science. And she had completed the four years course in January with the hope of going for the one-year mandatory National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, scheme in February and obtaining “Now I can have my life back in full. I can obtain my degree certificate and proceed for NYSC programme. Nothing could be more frustrating than such experience. WAEC almost truncated my ambition,” she stressed.
In the interim, Olowoyeye had registered as an apprentice for tailoring at a neighbourhood shop in order not to stay idle at home and in case her result was not revalidated or the matter dragged for a long time. “But I just couldn’t concentrate. My mind was always on how to get the matter resolved so that I would go back to school and continue from where I stopped. “Another thing is the thought of a credit pass that I need in Chemistry to enable me to pursue my Nursing studies after my NYSC programme that kept coming to mind,” she said. “That is why there are no enough words to express my happiness over the latest happening and I her degree certificate. But she got it wrong. She found out during her final clearance which included “operation shows your secondary school certificate” that her results on the WAEC website had been tampered with. Her Economics and Chemistry results had been cancelled leaving other subjects as they were.
The implication was that she no longer possessed the required results to study in the school, a development that did not only throw her into confusion but also halted her plans immediately. In a state of confusion, she contacted National Mirror. Her story was published on March 3, 2016 and the paper subsequently followed up on the development. Now, just last week and four months after the cancellation, WAEC has revalidated the results, restoring the two cancelled papers.
“It was a traumatic experience I would never wish give God the glory and I also thank all who stood by me, especially National Mirror, which took up the matter and did not relent until the revalidation was done.”
Telling the story of how she got the results revalidated, Olowoyeye, a native of Efon Alaaye in Ekiti State, said the journey was not easy as it appeared as she met brick walls at the WAEC National Office in Yaba Lagos in the process. According to her, although officials of the council confirmed her certificate to be genuine, they refused to admit the cancellation as an error as they insisted that the two subjects were cancelled years after the result and certificate were released. But what could have warranted the cancellation? Could WAEC have done that for no just cause years after it had issued her a certificate? Could the organisation genuinely take such step without communicating her former school and at the same time left her in the dark? And could there be a remedy or not were some of the questions running in Olowoyeye’s mind as various suggestions started coming to her.
Based on that, she wrote a personal letter of complaint dated January 15, 2016 to WAEC while the Proprietor of her former school, Our Saviour’s Standard College, Efon Alaaye, where she sat for the examination, Mr. R.O Ayotunde, wrote another one dated January 18, 2016 informing WAEC of the development. “Surprisingly, I didn’t get a reply to any of the two letters.
It was your paper’s report quoting the WAEC Public Relations Officer, Mr. Demianus Ojijeogu, as saying he could not say exactly what could have been responsible for the alteration of the result in question that restored my hope on the matter,” Olowoyeye recalled. Ojijeogu had in that report said there were many factors that could cause such development while refusing to mention any of them on the premise that he would not want to pre-empt impending investigation on the result.
But he advised that the affected candidate should write a fresh letter to the Head of the National Office of the organisation in Lagos requesting (and not complaining) for the revalidation of her results and assured that such a letter would attract express attention from the council.
“That was how I wrote the letter on March 7, 2016 and brought it to WAEC office in Lagos myself and followed it up with the assistance of your newspaper,” she said. Interestingly, WAEC did not communicate with Olowoyeye, to inform her that the matter had been resolved and that she could go back to the council’s website to check and print out her re-validated result. “I only checked the website as I used to do, especially since I submitted the last letter and I was promised it would be looked into when I discovered the re-validation. Again, I thank God and your newspaper for this development.
You have restored my hope,” she noted. And when National Mirror tried to find out what exactly went wrong for the cancellation, the council’s spokesman neither answered his phone call nor responded to text message till press time. But National Mirror’s investigations revealed that so many WAEC candidates in or out of schools in the country had similar case like that of Olowoyeye without knowing what to do and where to go. When contacted for his reaction to the re-validation of the result as a proprietor of the lady’s former school, Ayotunde expressed happiness over the development, insisting that the cancellation remains a mystery to him and the school.
However, Olowoyeye had since that same Friday gone back to EKSU to continue with her final clearance which had stopped since January 4 over the alteration.