Abducted Girls: we registered 530 male, female students for exams, Says WAEC

Against the backdrop of the conflicting information on the actual number  of girls abducted by terror group, Boko Haram at the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, the West African Examination Council, WAEC Friday night told the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan that it enrolled 530 female and male students for the examination.

It said the examination was ongoing,  when the insurgents  abducted more than 200 girls in the school.

According to the Head of WAEC National Office, Mr. Charles Eguridu, who took a barrage of questions from the women at the meeting, which started at 7pm and ended at about 11.30pm, the 530 students comprised 135 male and 396 female, who registered and were taking part in the examination at the time the over 200 girls were abducted on April 15.

Eguridu explained that af­ter the abduction, 189 candi­dates were relocated to Uba where they continued their examination.

Eguridu further dis­closed that although the school was a girls' school in WAEC's records, it had been converted into a mixed school, although the exam body was yet to receive a for­mal request for the change.

He said his office was try­ing to find out how many male and female candidates made up the 189 that were continuing with the exami­nation.

He further told the women that the computation would likely lead to the exact num­ber of female candidates who had been abducted by the in­surgents.

Eguridu, said the examina­tion body did not want to go public with all the informa­tion it had to avoid unneces­sary tension in the country, especially between the fed­eral and state governments. He, however, indicted the Borno State Government for the abduction. examination in the schools and that they are not ready to relocate their students from Chibok and indeed other ar­eas to Maiduguri or nearby locations where security agencies could provide se­curity.

'So, if we failed to con­duct the examination, the world will blame us. So at great risks, my officers went to Chibok and conducted the examinations.

'After the unfortunate incident when the students were abducted, our staff now got a response from the state that they were now ready to relocate the remain­ing students to another place called Uba. And as I speak, 189 candidates are continu­ing with the examination in Uba.'