… Withholds results of 2 States over unpaid fees
LAGOS — The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) on Monday released the results of the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for school candidates, with over 1.5 million candidates receiving their full results.
At a press briefing in Lagos, Head of WAEC’s Nigeria National Office, Dr. Amos Dangut, announced that out of 1,969,313 candidates who sat the exam across 23,554 schools, only 754,545 (38.32%) obtained credits and above in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
This marks a sharp decline from the 72.12% recorded in 2024.
Dangut attributed the performance drop to the Council’s newly adopted strategy of serialising objective test questions in core subjects like Mathematics and English to curb malpractice.
“The system reduced the incidence of collusion and signaled a need for students to rely on their own preparation,” he said.
The 2025 examination was held between April 24 and June 20, while coordination and marking took place from July 3 to 21.
WAEC deployed a real-time digital scoring system during the marking phase to ensure swift and accurate result processing.
Out of all candidates, 1,517,517 (77.06%) had their results fully processed and released, while 451,796 (22.94%) are still being processed due to technical issues.
The Council assured that these would be resolved in the coming days.
Additionally, WAEC withheld the results of 192,089 candidates, 9.75% of the total for offenses such as the use of banned mobile devices and collusion.
This is a slight improvement from the 11.92% withheld in 2024.
WAEC warned rogue website operators and compromised supervisors to desist from fraudulent practices, revealing that some culprits had already been apprehended.
In a related development, Dangut disclosed that the results of candidates sponsored by two state governments were withheld due to outstanding debts.
“By Sunday, four states had not paid their candidates’ exam fees. As of Monday morning, two states paid, and their results were released. The remaining two must pay before their candidates’ results can be accessed,” he said.
Candidates can check their results via the Council’s portal at http://waecdirect.org.
WAEC also reported that 12,178 candidates with special needs sat for the exam.
These included 112 visually impaired, 615 with hearing challenges, 52 spastic or mentally challenged, and 37 physically disabled, all of whom received adequate support.
In terms of gender, 976,787 (49.6%) candidates were male and 992,526 (50.4%) female.
Among those who obtained five credits including English and Mathematics, females slightly outperformed males, accounting for 53.99% of the successful candidates.
This year’s exam marked the beginning of WAEC’s transition to Computer-Based Testing (CBT), with candidates given the option of taking either the paper-based or CBT version.
WAEC said it aims to fully digitise the exam process for school candidates by 2026.
