The West African Examination Council (WAEC) said that the introduction digital WAEC certificate will simplify the admission process for many Nigerians seeking to school abroad.
According to the WAEC, the system will also remove any doubt on certificates presented by Nigerians.
The Head of Nigeria National Office for WAEC, Patrick Areghan, stated this on Friday during a webinar organized in partnership with UK-based Recognition Agency, ENIC.
According to him, the digital certificate initiative would support the mobility of students moving from Nigeria to other parts of the world.
WAEC said about 30 million certificate holders who wrote the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) between 1970 till date, will be able to access and share the original copies of their digital certificates from anywhere in the world through the digital platform.
Eliminating bottlenecks: Providing insights on the initiative, Areghan noted that before the launch of the platform, the manual system that was in place consumed a lot of time and energy, coupled with other bureaucratic bottlenecks. He said:
- “The mode created challenges for persons from not only Nigeria but the continent, seeking to grab opportunities abroad.
- “The idea of the digital mode of accessing our certificates then came up and here we are today. With this new digital platform, issues of doubt, delay, human intervention, fire, wetness, and outright loss of certificates and others, will be adequately taken care of.”
- “We expect the Nigerian students to be able to seamlessly access opportunities seamlessly anywhere they choose to globally, with this collaboration between WAEC and ENIC, as well as other international bodies that participated in this seminar,” he added.
Other West African countries: On whether other member countries of WAEC had adopted the digital platform, Areghan noted that Ghana would soon be part of the initiative.
- “Right now, I must say that most of the five-member countries are yet to key in but a country like Ghana has given us a firm assurance of adopting this technology very soon. You know, though WAEC is a sub-regional body, made up of various countries, they are all independent.
- “Every country moves at its own pace, under the general umbrella of the headquarters. They can all move only when they are ready to. Like I said before, ours is a pilot scheme, which is to say, they don’t need to repeat any of the processes anymore to embrace the technology,” he said.