Final year secondary school students will have to sit for the General Certificate of Education (GCE) in November if there is no shift in the timetable of the West African Examination Council (WAEC), the Federal Government have said.
This development is coming following pressures by stakeholders along with students blaming the government for making a u-turn on the resumption of school.
Also, the WAEC has insisted that it will not reschedule the date of the exam, which was fixed starting from the first week of next month, to suit Nigerian students.
Furthermore, the case of Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the country, has continued to rise, despite several precautions, guideline, along with restrictions set out by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC.
However, while answering questions at the 52nd joint national briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 in Abuja, the Minister of State, Education, Mr. Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, said that government would meet with stakeholders again on July 30, to review the guidelines, provisions and preparations for the safe reopening of schools.
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According to Nwajiuba, sitting for the GCE may become the only option for Nigerian students if the country cannot convince WAEC to shift its examinations as requested for by the Federal Government.
“Should Nigeria be able to meet up with the WAEC timetable, there is already a negotiated timeline to move local language subjects such as Ibo, Yoruba and Hausa behind to allow all participating countries the needed time to write the general subjects at the same time.
“WAEC, unfortunately, is unable to wholesomely move the examination but we have also worked out a negotiated timeline with WAEC on what we call peculiar Nigerian subjects which in the language of WAEC are subjects that are only held in Nigeria such as Ibo, Hausa and Yoruba.
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“The Ghanaians will take examinations peculiar to them. But they are all in the first part of the time table. So, we will work out a domestication module that will take our peculiar subjects behind after we have done general subjects.”
When asked to comment on the Oyo State Government that cancelled third term, the minister said that “education is on the concurrent list and while the states are expected to work together on common front, especially on the COVID-19 crisis, they are at liberty to evolve some measures on their own.”
