The Rivers State Commissioner for Education, Professor Kaniye Ebeku, says the Rivers State government is making huge investments in the education sector.
Speaking to journalists in Port Harcourt on Wednesday shortly after addressing principals of public senior secondary schools in the state ahead of the conduct of the 2022 West African Senior School Certificate Examination, WASSCE, the Education Commissioner revealed that over a billion naira has been expended for the registration about 60 thousand public school candidates for the examination.
Professor Ebeku reiterated government’s commitment in funding external examinations in public schools across the state..
He said: “the state government is making a lot of investments in the field of education. Last year I checked the aggregate of expenditure for the external examinations sponsorship and I said that it was over one 1 billion; some of you thought I was kidding and were living in denial”.
“Today, I have come to show you that only for WAEC 2022 sponsorship, the government has spent about one billion naira. You can go to WAEC to verify this information . So you can see that the state is spending billions of naira to fund and sponsor candidates in public schools in the State for the examinations”.
He also reiterated the warning against examination malpractices in the forthcoming examinations, noting that any staff caught might risk dismissal.
In his words, “the state government, the Ministry of education, has zero tolerance for examination malpractice. We have reiterated our warning to the school principals that if we catch them for examination malpractices and WAEC sanctions them, we will sanction the principal by dismissal”.
Speaking further, Professor Ebeku cautioned principals against enlisting external candidates in the examinations, noting that any principal involved in registering external candidates for government- funded WASSCE, NECO, NABTEB, BECE will be made to refund monies collected to the state government.
He said “Also there are some malpractices on the part of some of the principals in sponsoring those they should not sponsor and we have called them to recant”.
The briefing was well-attended by school Principals across the 23 Local Government Areas of the State. Also in attendance were Directors of the Ministry and Dr. Wisdom Ade, Acting Chairman of the Senior Secondary Schools Board.
