West African Examination Council (WAEC) yesterday disclosed that it has increased the registration fee for its examination from N13,950 to N18,000.
Head, Nigeria National Office, WAEC, Mr Patrick Areghan, made the disclosure during a visit to the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, in Abuja on Thursday.
The Council blamed spiral inflation being witnessed in Nigeria as the reason for the increment.
Areghan said that the conversion of naira to dollar today was a misery saying that the upward review of fees was necessary to enable the council render its services efficiently to the Nigerian child.
” There has to be that marginal increase to enable us to do better services. The examiners are now happy as we are able to increase their marking fees through this marginal increase.
” The money actually went for the payment of examiners to enable us satisfies them so that they can do the job better,” he said.
He said that each student writing the examinations now has to pay N18,000 as against the former N13,950.
On whether the council was planning to introduce the Computer Based Test (CBT) in the conduct of its examinations, Areghan said CBT would only be achieved if government provided the required facilities to enable it conduct such examinations.
He said that WAEC conducts examinations for over 20,000 secondary schools in the country and in 76 subjects and as such would be difficult to use CBT for its examinations knowing well that a candidate could offer as low as eight subjects.
The Chairman of Council, Prof. Ato Essuman, who led the WAEC team on the courtesy visit, solicited the support of the Federal Government to procure an outstanding printing machine to help its service delivery.
