Kogi government cautions against fraudulent Principals collecting WAEC fees

Kogi State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Wemi Jones has called on parents and guardians to beware of principals collecting West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) exam fees as it has been paid for by the governor, describing such act as fraudulent.

He stated this while he presented himself before the Kogi State 8th assembly after been summoned following complaints laid against the ministry about some school heads collecting the exam fee from students.

Following a rigorous questions and answers section before the parliament, Wemi Jones affirmed that the ministry of education was just in the process of collecting reliable and concrete data of all students ready to take WAEC examination from public secondary schools in the 21 local government across the state.

Upon completion, the ministry will register and pay directly to WAEC from their coffers and not remit any money to the school principals which according to him, will make the system difficult to manipulate.

In his words “we know how many students will write WAEC next and the year after and it becomes difficult for any principal or school administrator in any public school to manipulate the figures to aid our planning”.

In addition, he assured the house that the sum of N497.3million released by the governor is intact and will be utilized judiciously.

He emphasized that education is free in Kogi State, not even Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) levy should be charged, private school owners must not charge also more than N33,100 WAEC fees.

The speaker of the House, Aliyu Umar expressed satisfaction in the responses of the commissioner.

However, he ordered the commissioner to announce the ministry’s plan on radio stations and conclude all processes in time giving an ultimatum of 30th December for every child to be registered and paid for as the legislators will patiently wait for positive feedback.