Column

The Minister’s Scathing Remark On WAEC …Two Conflicting WASSCE Results Released

Published

14 years ago

September 7, 2011

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) recently released the results of the last May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE), showing a poor outing of candidates from Nigeria who participated in the examinations. As announced by Dr Iyi Uwadiae, Head, WAEC National Office, out of 1,540,250 candidates who wrote the examinations, only 472,906 candidates made the desired results.

But to the chagrin of many, the WAEC authorities last week, released yet another result of the same candidates who participated in the examinations, conflicting with the results released earlier. According to reports, some candidates who made good grades in the first results that were released, failed in the results released last week by the WAEC authorities.

As indicated by WAEC’s Head of National Office, the last May/June result shows a mass failure of candidates as only 31% of the candidates could make five credits, including English and Mathematics. In the reports, WAEC lamented the abysmal failure of Nigerian candidates in the past four years.

Apparently angered by the two conflicting WASSCE results released by WAEC, the Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike, last week, summoned the WAEC officials to his office to explain what led to the two conflicting results released by the WAEC authorities,

Addressing the WAEC officials in Abuja, led by Dr Uwadiae, Head of its National Office, the Minister of State for Education took a swipe at the WAEC authorities, and warned that the Federal Government would not accept such conflicting WASSCE results. Wike noted that such conflicting results could affect the future of Nigerian youth (students), and therefore asked the WAEC authorities to take a second look at the last May/June WASSCE, and publish an authentic result. He, also advised WAEC to address the issue of cancellation and withholding of results of thousands of candidates.

Responding on behalf of WAEC, Dr Uwadiae, Head of its National Office, said the conflicting WASSCE results, was as a result of what he termed “human error”. He therefore, assured that everything humanly possible would be done to correct the anomaly.

That said, it is sad and unfortunate that WAEC could make such avoidable mistake in the release of WASSCE results, a situation that may (if not properly handled) ruin the future of thousands of candidates in the last WASSC examinations.

Again, it may not be out of place to suggest that the mass failure in WASSCE in Nigeria in the past four years, especially in the last May/June examinations, is as a result of “human error” on the part of WAEC officials.

One can recall vividly that in 2007, shortly before leaving office as president of this country, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo chided the WAEC authorities over the incessant cancellation of the results of its examinations, conducted in the country. Giving an insight into the mass failure in WASSC examinations, Obasanjo lamented that between 2000-2004, only about 33.3% of candidates at the Senior School Certificate Examinations passed not less than five subjects, including English and Mathematics at the minimum of Credit level. He therefore, asked the WAEC authorities to nip the mind-boggling situation in the bud.

But while the WAEC authorities are being blamed for the mass failure in WASSC examinations in Nigeria, the various levels of government in the country should also be held responsible for the unfortunate situation. It is common knowledge that secondary education belongs to the critical level and sector of any economy. This is why most developed economies spend the highest chunk of their budget on secondary education.

Regrettably in Nigeria, the authorities at the federal, state and local government levels do not seem to have paid the desired attention to secondary education. In some states, secondary schools are dotted with dilapidated school buildings.

Worse still, the teachers, saddled with the responsibility of impacting knowledge to school children are not given adequate incentives and their salaries not paid as at when due. As a result, the teachers sometimes abandon the classrooms for their own businesses in order to make ends meet. How then would there not be mass failure in examinations conducted by WAEC.

What’s more, the nation’s school management and supervision which are palpably low, attracts less attention from some ministers, commissioners, top civil servants and politicians. Education, they say, is the foundation of other sectors of the economy, and any government, be it at the federal, state or local levels that brushes education aside, does so at its own risk.

Although former President Obasanjo made particular reference to the period between 2000-2004 in the mass failure in WAEC examinations, there is everything to show that the mass failure will continue in the examinations conducted by WAEC in Nigeria.

According to education analysts, there may be no significant improvement in the WASSC examinations since secondary education has not been given the attention it deserves. It is instructive to state that the failure by the authorities to bridge the process at the secondary level tends to create difficulties in upgrading the standard at even the primary level, in both quantitative and qualitative terms.

Therefore, all hands must be on deck now to shore up post-primary education in the country in order to pull Nigeria from the quagmire of poor performance in examinations conducted by WAEC.

All said, it is hoped that WAEC will live up to its responsibility and publish a result that would be acceptable to both the government and the candidates. It’s also instructive to state that WAEC decisions have for too long, ruined the future of many of its candidates through withholding of exam results, as well as outright cancellation of thousands of results of unsuspecting candidates.

Column

Renewable Energy Faces Looming Workforce Crisis

Published

3 days ago

August 18, 2025

The Tide

Despite a discouraging political climate and unprecedented uncertainty in the United States clean energy sector, low costs of wind and solar energy continue to drive growth of the domestic clean energy sector.

However, while market forces continue to support the expansion of renewable energy capacity, the sector faces critical challenges extending beyond the antagonism of the Trump administration.

The continued growth of solar and wind power risks being hampered by several mitigating factors, including (but not limited to) intensifying competition over increasingly scarce suitable land plots, stressed and volatile global supply chains, lengthy and unpredictable development processes, Complex and overlapping permitting processes, and a critical talent gap.

The renewable energy labor shortage has been years in the making, but is no less closer to resolution. The issue spans both white collar and blue collar positions, and threatens to kneecap progress in the booming sector.

Between the years of 2011 and 2030, it is expected that global levels of installed wind and solar capacity will quadruple. Analysis from McKinsey & Company concludes that “this huge surge in new wind and solar installations will be almost impossible to staff with qualified development and construction employees as well as operations and maintenance workers.

“It’s unclear where these employees will come from in the future,” the McKinsey report goes on to say.

He continued that “There are too few people with specialized and relevant expertise and experience, and too many of them are departing for other companies or other industries.”

The solar and wind industries are suffering from a lack of awareness of career paths and opportunities, despite their well-established presence in domestic markets.

Emergent clean energies face an even steeper uphill battle. Geothermal energy, for example, is poised for explosive growth as one of vanishingly few carbon-free energy solutions with broad bipartisan support, but faces a severe talent gap and punishingly low levels of awareness in potential talent pools.

But while the outlook is discouraging, industry insiders argue that it’s too soon to sound the alarms. In fact, a recent report from Utility Drive contends that “solutions to the energy talent gap are hiding in plain sight.”

The article breaks down those solutions into four concrete approaches: building partnerships with educators, formulating Registered Apprenticeship pathways, updating credential requirements to reflect real-world needs, and rethinking stale recruitment strategies.

Targeting strategic alliances with educational institutions is a crucial strategy for creating a skilled workforce, particularly in emerging sectors like geothermal energy.

Businesses can, for example, partner with and sponsor programs at community colleges, creating a pipeline for the next generation of skilled workers. Apprenticeships serve a similar purpose, encouraging hands-on learning outside of the classroom. Such apprenticeships can apply to white collar positions as well as blue collar roles.

“If we can figure out a way to educate the younger generation that you can actually have a career that you can be proud of and help solve a problem the world is facing, but also work in the extractive industry, I think that could go a long way,” said Jeanine Vany, executive vice president of corporate affairs for Canadian geothermal firm Eavor, speaking about the geothermal energy talent gap.

These approaches won’t solve the talent gap overnight – especially as political developments may discourage would-be jobseekers from placing their bets on a career in the renewables sector. But they will go a long way toward mitigating the issue.

“The clean energy transition depends on a workforce that can sustain it,” reports Utility Drive. “To meet the hiring challenges, employers will benefit from looking beyond the next position to fill and working toward a strategic, industry-wide vision for attracting talent.”

By: Haley Zaremba

Column

Why Oil Prices Could See Significant Upside Shift

Published

3 weeks ago

July 28, 2025

The Tide

The 9th OPEC International Seminar was held in Vienna recently, wherein participants discussed energy security, investment, climate change, and energy poverty, with a particular emphasis on balancing these competing priorities.

According to commodity analysts at Standard Chartered, the summit, titled “Charting Pathways Together: The Future of Global Energy”, featured significantly greater engagement from international oil companies and consuming country governments, with discussions converging on a more inclusive shared agenda rather than non-intersecting approaches seen in previous years.

However, StanChart reported there was a clear mismatch between what energy producers vs. market analysts think about spare production capacity.

Unlike Wall Street analysts, who frequently talk about spare capacity of 5-6 million barrels per day (mb/d), speakers from several sectors of the industry noted that spare capacity is both limited and very geographically concentrated.

StanChart believes this erroneous assumption about spare capacity has been a big drag on oil prices, and the implications for the whole forward curve of oil prices could be potentially profound once traders realize that roughly two-thirds of the capacity they thought was available on demand does not actually exist.

This makes the analysts bullish about the general shape of their forecast 2026 price trajectory (Figure 32), i.e., a set of significant upward shifts as opposed to the flat trajectory seen in the market curve and in analyst consensus.

In other words, oil prices could have as much as $15/barrel upside from current levels.

StanChart is not the only oil bull here. Goldman Sachs recently hiked its oil price forecast for H2 2025, saying the market is increasingly shifting its focus from recession fears to potential supply disruptions, low spare capacity, lower oil inventories, especially among OECD countries and production constraints by Russia.

GS has increased its Brent forecast by $5/bbl to $66/bbl, and by $6 for WTI crude to $63/bbl, slightly lower than current levels of $68.34/bbl and 66.24/bbl for Brent and WTI crude, respectively.

However, the Wall Street bank has maintained its 2026 price forecast at $56/bbl for Brent and $52 for WTI, due to “an offset between a boost from higher long-dated prices and a hit from a wider 1.7M bbl/day surplus.’’ Previously, GS had forecast a 1.5M bbl/day surplus for the coming year.

Further, Goldman sees a stronger oil price rebound beyond 2026 due to reduced spare capacity.

EU natural gas inventories have climbed at faster-than-average clip in recent times. According to Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) data, Europe’s gas inventories stood at 73.10 billion cubic metres (bcm) on 13 July, good for a 2.31 bcm w/w increase.

Still, the injection rate is not enough to completely fill the continent’s gas stores, with the current clip on track to take inventories to about 97.9 bcm, or 84.3% of storage capacity, at the end of the injection season.

Europe’s gas demand remains fairly lacklustre despite extremely high temperatures across much of the continent in recent weeks.

According to estimates by StanChart, EU gas demand for the first 14 days of July averaged 583 million cubic meters/day, nearly 3% lower from a year ago but a 10% improvement from the June lows.

However, StanChart is bullish on natural gas prices, saying the market is likely underestimating the likelihood of more Russian gas being taken off the markets.

Back in April, U.S. senators Lindsey Graham (Republican) and Richard Blumenthal (Democrat), introduced “Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025”, with the legislation enjoying broad bipartisan support (85 co-sponsors in the Senate out of 100 senators).

In a joint statement on 14 July, the two senators noted that President Trump’s decision to implement 100% secondary tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil and gas if a peace agreement is not reached within 50 days but pledged that they will continue to work on “bipartisan Russia sanctions legislation that would implement up to 500 percent tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil and gas”.

StanChart has predicted that the Trump administration is unlikely to take actions that risk driving oil prices higher. However, Russian gas remains in the crosshairs, with U.S. LNG likely to see a surge in demand if Russian gas exports are curtailed.

StanChart estimates that the EU’s net imports of Russian pipeline gas averaged 79.8 million cubic metres per day (mcm/d) in the first 14 days of July, with all non-transit flows into the EU coming into Bulgaria through the Turkstream pipeline, with Hungary and Slovakia also receiving Turkstream gas.

There was also a flow of about 65 mcm/d of Russian LNG in the first half of July, with Russia providing 18.6% of the EU’s net imports. StanChart has predicted that we could see a strong rally in natural gas prices if Washington slaps Moscow with fresh gas sanctions.

By: Alex Kimani

Column

Nuclear Stocks Soar on Stargate AI Infrastructure Announcement

Published

7 months ago

January 28, 2025

The Tide

Over the past couple of years, the nuclear energy sector has enjoyed a renaissance in the U.S. and many western countries, thanks to the global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, high power demand and nuclear’s status as a low-carbon energy source.

Uranium demand has soared, thanks to a series of policy “U-turns” with governments from Japan to Germany revising plans to phase out nuclear power.

Uranium spot prices hit an all-time high of $81.32 per pound in February, double the level 12 months prior.

According to the World Nuclear Association, demand from reactors is expected to climb 28% by 2030, and nearly double by 2040. Not surprisingly, the sector’s popular benchmark, VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NYSEARCA:NLR), recently hit an all-time high.

However, last month, nuclear energy stocks started pulling back sharply, mostly because the sector was seriously overheating. One of the biggest losers was NuScale Power Corp. (NYSE:SMR), with the stock crashing nearly 30% in a matter of weeks.

The selloff kicked off after the company disclosed an agreement with several brokerage firms in which the company may offer and sell from time to time as much as $200M in common stock.

NuScale says proceeds from the sale will be used for general corporate purposes, including operating expenses, capital expenditures, R&D costs and working capital. NuScale is a developer of modular light water reactor nuclear power plants.

Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) are advanced nuclear reactors with power capacities that range from 50-300 MW(e) per unit, compared to 700+ MW(e) per unit for traditional nuclear power reactors.

Thankfully, nuclear stocks are on fire again after President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a $500 billion joint venture with Oracle Corp. (NYSE:ORCL), OpenAI, and SoftBank (OTCPK:SFTBY) to build AI infrastructure in the U.S.

The companies have pledged to commit $100 billion to start, and as much as $500 billion over the next four years toward the initiative, with Trump calling it “largest AI infrastructure project in history”.

OpenAI, ChatGPT maker, said it expects the project, called Stargate, to help support American leadership in AI, and that it could create “hundreds of thousands” of jobs in the U.S. Other tech giants including Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)) and Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM) are also expected to be technology partners in the project.

NuScale stock has rocketed 1,175% over the past 12 months; Oklo Inc. (NYSE:OKLO), which is backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has surged 299%, Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) has soared 386% while Centrus Energy (NYSE:LEU) has jumped 73% over the timeframe.

Meanwhile, shares of Nano Nuclear Energy (NASDAQ:NNE) have jumped 1,017% since its May 2024 IPO. The shares made further gains on Thursday after the company was awarded patents related to its designs for a modular transportable nuclear generator.

Nano Nuclear is developing ZEUS, a solid core battery reactor, and ODIN, a low-pressure salt coolant reactor.

Yet another big mover is Baltimore, Maryland-based Constellation Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:CEG), a power utility that sells natural gas, energy-related products, and sustainable solutions.

CEG shares have soared 200% over the past 52 weeks. The company owns approximately 33,094 megawatts of generating capacity consisting of nuclear, wind, solar, natural gas, and hydroelectric assets.

The big nuclear rally kicked off last year after NuScale signed an agreement with Standard Power to supply the data center provider with SMRs. Standard Power–a developer of modular data centers–will use NuScale Power’s power solutions at two separate sites, where up to 12 SMRs (at each site) would be used to provide power for new data centers.

Suddenly, the market took note of SMRs as a viable solution for data centers struggling to keep up with surging power demands by artificial intelligence (AI) computing.

The International Energy Agency has projected that global data center electricity consumption will jump from 460 terawatt-hours in 2022 to 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026.

The long-term outlook for the nuclear sector remains bullish, with nuclear power expected to meet surging AI demand and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Goldman Sachs, escalating electricity needs from running AI data centers will generate downstream investment opportunities that will benefit utilities, renewable energy generation, and industrial sectors.

The investment bank has forecast that data center power demand will grow at 15% compound annual growth rate from 2023-2030, with data centers consuming 8% of total U.S. electricity output at the end of the forecast period compared to ~3% currently.

Analysts estimate that ~47 GW of additional power generation capacity will be required to meet the growth in U.S. data center power demand by 2030.

Last year, a total of 34 countries, including the U.S., pledged to increasingly deploy nuclear power to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) report Electricity 2024, nuclear power generation is forecast to reach an all-time high globally in 2025, exceeding the previous record set in 2021 as new reactors begin commercial operations in multiple markets, including China, India, South Korea, and Europe; output from France climbs and several plants in Japan are restarted.

Kimani writes for Oilprice.com