The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) Nigeria has issued updated results for the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for school candidates after identifying a grading error that impacted candidate scores significantly.
At a press briefing held at WAEC’s national office in Yaba, Lagos, the Head of WAEC Nigeria, Dr. Amos Dangut, acknowledged a serious mistake involving the marking of serialised exam papers. This error led to incorrect scoring for several subjects, including English Language Objective Test (Paper 3), Mathematics, Biology, and Economics.
Dr. Dangut expressed deep regret on behalf of the council, describing the error as “very embarrassing” and apologized sincerely to candidates, parents, educators, and stakeholders affected by the mishap.
The issue stemmed from a wrongly assigned serialised code file used during printing, which caused some answer keys to be applied incorrectly. Notably, candidates who took the exam via computer-based testing (CBT) were not impacted.
With corrections applied, the council reported that:
- 1,794,821 candidates (91.14%) achieved at least five credits in subjects, with or without English and Mathematics.
- 1,239,884 candidates (62.96%) earned five credits including English and Mathematics — a substantial improvement from the earlier reported 38.32%.
- Female candidates made up 53.05% of those meeting this benchmark.
Despite the improvement, performance is still below the 72.12% recorded in 2024 by about 9%.
WAEC confirmed that a total of 1,969,313 candidates sat the exams, including those from Nigerian curriculum schools in Benin Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, and Equatorial Guinea. Special needs candidates were also accommodated.
While most candidates’ results are fully processed, about 10.45% still await completion due to technical delays. In addition, results for 191,053 candidates (9.7%) have been withheld pending investigations into suspected malpractice—a reduction from last year’s 11.92%. Affected candidates can seek redress via the WAEC complaints portal.
WAEC urged all stakeholders to continue efforts to eradicate exam malpractice and assured that outstanding results will be released soon. Candidates are encouraged to check their results at www.waecdirect.org and apply for digital certificates, which will be available within 48 hours of verification. Physical certificates will be ready within 90 days.
Dr. Dangut also reminded that candidates sponsored by states with outstanding debts to WAEC will have their results withheld until payments are cleared.
Finally, WAEC apologized for the inconvenience caused and thanked the Federal Government, the Minister of Education, and education agencies for their support during the review process.
