WAEC Updates 2025 WASSCE Results After Error
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) in Nigeria has published revised results for the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination for school candidates, following the identification of grading errors that considerably influenced candidates’ performance statistics.
During a press conference on Friday at the council’s national headquarters in Yaba, Lagos, Dr. Amos Dangut, the Head of WAEC Nigeria, acknowledged a serious mistake in the evaluation of serialised papers, which caused a misrepresentation of candidates’ results.
“With profound regret, I, on behalf of the Registrar to Council, Management, and Staff of WAEC Nigeria, extend my apologies for the discrepancies found in the grading of serialised papers.
“This is extremely difficult for us to communicate, but we must recognize that it is quite embarrassing,” Dangut stated.
He explained that the council had introduced a new security feature called paper serialisation, which is already utilized by another national examination body.
However, during the reviews conducted after the examinations, it was revealed that the English Language Objective Test (Paper 3) was scored using incorrect answer keys due to a misallocated serialised code file.
Other subjects affected by serialisation included Mathematics, Biology, and Economics.
“Upon investigation, we found that an erroneous serialised code file was used during the printing of the English Language Objective paper.
“This resulted in the papers being scored with the wrong answer keys. It is worth mentioning that candidates who took the exams via the computer-based mode were unaffected,” Dangut clarified.
With the errors now rectified, 1,794,821 candidates — accounting for 91.14 per cent— received credits in at least five subjects (whether including English and Mathematics or not).
Remarkably, 1,239,884 candidates or 62.96 per cent achieved five credits, incorporating English and Mathematics, which marks a significant increase from the previously announced 38.32 per cent.
Of this total, 657,819 candidates (53.05 per cent) were female, while 582,065 (46.95 per cent) were male.
However, this still indicates a 9.16 per cent decrease from the 72.12 per cent success rate recorded in 2024.
WAEC reported that 1,969,313 candidates participated in the examination, which included students from schools in the Benin Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, and Equatorial Guinea that follow the Nigerian curriculum.
The council also accommodated 12,178 special needs candidates, such as the visually impaired (112), hearing impaired (615), physically challenged (37), and those with spastic or mental challenges (52). The results for these candidates have also been processed and released.
“All these candidates received adequate support in the management of the examination,” added Dangut.
While 1,763,470 candidates (89.55 per cent) have had their results adequately processed, 205,916 (10.45 per cent) still have one or more subjects awaiting completion due to technical difficulties.
WAEC assured all that efforts are underway to finalize the processing and release the remaining results shortly.
Meanwhile, results for 191,053 candidates (9.7 per cent) have been withheld due to allegations of examination malpractice.
This figure is an improvement from the 11.92 per cent recorded in 2024.
Ongoing investigations are in progress, and affected candidates can seek recourse through waecinternational.org/complaints.
“WAEC will continue to impose sanctions for any instances of examination malpractice. Everyone must collaborate to clean up the system,” emphasized Dangut.
WAEC urged candidates to check their results on the official portal www.waecdirect.org and to apply for digital certificates, which will be accessible within 48 hours of result verification. Physical certificates will be available within 90 days.
Dangut reminded everyone that candidates sponsored by state governments with outstanding debts will not be able to access their results until the council receives payment.
“We appeal to relevant authorities to take the necessary actions to allow affected schools and candidates to retrieve their results,” he urged.
Dangut extended a heartfelt apology to all stakeholders.
“We recognize the emotional distress that candidates, parents, teachers, school administrators, Ministries of Education, and the media must have faced.
“This is a challenging period for us at WAEC. We are making every effort to prevent a repeat of this unfortunate situation,” he stated.
WAEC also expressed gratitude to the Federal Government, the Minister of Education, and state education authorities for their assistance during the review and resolution process.
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