West African Examinations Council (WAEC) yesterday released the November /December 2007 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and withheld results of 35, 485 candidates for alleged examination malpractice.

This came as the council said it would soon commence online examinations especially for WASSCE.

The council's newly appointed Head of National Office (HNO), Dr. Iyi Uwadial who disclosed this in Lagos on Monday, said cases of the withheld results would be taken to the Nigeria Examinations Committee (NEC) for further deliberations.

Of the 378,018 candidates who wrote the examination, the HNO said 283, 756 persons representing 75.06 per cent have their full results released, while 40,174 others representing 10.63 per cent were still being processed.

"Some of the these errors and omission occurred during online registration for the examination, while some were committed during the actual conduct of the examination, such as poor shading or handling of scanable objective answer sheeting", he explained.

Giving further breakdown, Dr. Uwadial said about 75,112 candidates representing 19.87 per cent obtained credits and above in English language, Mathematics and other subjects.

According to him, 31,148 candidates were science oriented, even as 8,468 and 35,496 others were social science and Art oriented.

"Further analysis of the results shows that 13, 230 candidates representing 3.5 per cent of the total also obtained five credits and above in five subjects without English language and Mathematics. Of the total number of candidates who obtained five credits and above, which include English language and Mathematics, 33,049 candidates are female representing 8.74 per cent, while a total number of 42,063 candidates representing 11.13 per cent are male", he declared.