Kelly Odaro
The recent announcement by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) regarding the performance of candidates in the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) has cast a long, dark shadow over Nigeria’s educational landscape.
According to Dr. Amos Dangut, the Head of WAEC’s National Office in Lagos, only 38.32 per cent of the 1,969,313 candidates who sat the examination, obtained credit passes in five subjects including English Language and Mathematics. This represents a staggering 33.8 per cent drop from the 72.12 per cent success rate recorded in 2024.
While the Council attributes this sharp decline to strengthened anti-examination malpractice measures, the underlying implications of such a dismal outcome transcend mere statistics. It is a national alarm, a distress signal that demands immediate attention, not just from educational stakeholders but from every segment of Nigerian society. This outcome is indicative of deeper socio-economic, institutional, and cultural crises that have long plagued the nation’s education sector.
In this column, I explore the far-reaching implications of this performance collapse within the broader Nigerian context, highlighting the dangers it portends for national development, youth empowerment, public morality, economic progress, and the long-term security of the country.
No doubt, education is the bedrock of any thriving society. It equips the populace with the tools to innovate, govern, produce, and thrive. When a country fails to educate its youth, it mortgages its future. The 2025 WAEC results signal not just poor preparation for an examination. They reveal an erosion of Nigeria’s intellectual capital. For a nation already grappling with high youth unemployment, poor governance, and insecurity, the mass failure is nothing short of catastrophic.
I am not speaking of a handful of schools in remote areas; this is a national outcome that reflects systemic rot, from curriculum design to classroom delivery, from educational policy to parental responsibility.
WAEC’s renewed anti-malpractice campaign, while commendable, has unintentionally unmasked the fragility and fraudulence that has defined Nigeria’s secondary school system for years. The massive drop in performance indicates that a significant proportion of students were relying on external aids to pass examinations. The sudden withdrawal of these ‘crutches’ — miracle centres, leaked exam papers, and bribed invigilators, has now revealed a disturbing truth: many of our schools were producing students who could not pass on merit.
Nigeria has been awarding certificates not to the deserving but to the deceptive. This reality calls for a re-evaluation of not only our assessment methods but our entire educational culture.
Human capital — the skills, knowledge, and capabilities of a country’s citizens, is arguably the most important asset in a post-industrial, knowledge-driven economy. Nigeria’s comparative advantage has always been its population. But this advantage becomes a burden when the people are unskilled, uneducated, and unemployable.
The 2025 WAEC performance decline signals a troubling devaluation of Nigeria’s human capital stock. The graduates of today become the workforce of tomorrow. If the foundations are this weak, we are raising a generation ill-equipped to compete globally or solve national problems. How can we build industries, innovate in agriculture, or drive digital economies when our youth are failing basic secondary school examinations?
The aftermath of mass failure in public examinations goes far beyond disappointment. For many Nigerian students, passing WAEC is the key to upward social mobility. It determines access to higher education, scholarships, and employment opportunities. A significant number of those who failed may now be pushed permanently into the informal sector or forced to repeat a year, often a year of financial and psychological cost to their families.
This scenario worsens existing inequalities between rich and poor urban and rural dwellers. While elite families can afford private universities or overseas education, children from low-income backgrounds —especially in rural areas are left stranded. Over time, this fuels resentment, increases youth restiveness, and deepens societal divisions.
The collapse in performance once again raises fundamental questions about the relevance of Nigeria’s curriculum. Is the current curriculum too abstract, rigid, or outmoded? Does it prepare students for 21st-century challenges? Unfortunately, much of what is taught is based on rote memorisation rather than conceptual understanding, critical thinking, or problem-solving skills.
Moreover, many teachers across Nigeria, particularly the ones in some private schools, are undertrained, underpaid, and unmotivated. Some struggle to comprehend the subjects they teach. In public schools, dilapidated infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, and lack of instructional materials further compromise teaching and learning. The result is an education system that produces students who struggle to pass when cheating is taken off the table.
Year after year, education is underfunded in national and state budgets. Despite the UNESCO recommendation of 15–20 per cent of total national expenditure on education, Nigeria consistently allocates between 5–7 per cent. This underfunding is evident in the decaying school buildings, outdated textbooks, unpaid teachers, and limited investments in digital learning.
It is disingenuous for policymakers to express surprise at the WAEC results while starving the education sector of necessary funds and reforms. Without a deliberate and consistent increase in education financing, failure will continue to replicate itself in future WAEC examinations.
The 2025 WAEC outcome also forces introspection on the part of parents and guardians. In many homes, education is no longer prioritised. Children spend more time on social media than on their books. Some parents encourage or sponsor exam malpractice, believing success at any cost is preferable to failure on merit.
This moral collapse within the family unit must be addressed. Academic success must be rooted in discipline, hard work, and integrity, not in shortcuts, criminality, or peer comparison. Parents must resume their role as primary educators, monitor schoolwork, encourage reading culture, and partner with teachers for holistic development.
Nigeria’s schools have largely failed to embrace the digital revolution in education. While countries like Rwanda and Kenya are teaching coding and robotics in secondary schools, many Nigerian students do not have access to computers. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the deep digital divide in the country, with millions unable to participate in online learning.
WAEC’s failure statistics point to this digital backwardness. In an age where digital literacy is essential for every profession, our students are left behind, unable to function effectively in a modern, tech-driven world. Bridging this gap should be a national priority, starting from the grassroots.
A deeper concern lies in the moral implications of the sudden decline in performance. The fact that many students failed when cheating was eliminated shows how entrenched dishonesty has become in our society. This failure is not only academic, but also it is ethical. We are grooming a generation that views integrity as a hindrance to success.
It is time to return to values-based education, where ethics, responsibility, and citizenship are taught as part of the curriculum. If our students cannot succeed without cutting corners, how do we expect them to become upright leaders, professionals, and entrepreneurs in the future?
An uneducated and idle youth population is a ticking time bomb. Already, the country is struggling with kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism, drug abuse, and terrorism — all of which have roots in poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness. The 2025 WAEC results suggest that more young people are about to be consigned to the streets, jobless and disillusioned. Not all can afford to re-enrol for WASSCE or alternative examinations like NECO’s S.S.C.E.
If not urgently addressed, this educational crisis could become a security nightmare, with criminal elements taking advantage of a growing army of idle, unskilled youths to fuel unrest, violence, and political instability.
While WAEC has taken a bold step in curbing malpractice, it must not stop at exposure. It must also participate actively in educational reform, offering recommendations to governments and institutions on how to raise standards. Exam formats must evolve to encourage understanding, application, and originality rather than regurgitation.
There must also be greater investment in continuous assessment and practical-based learning. Schools should be rated not only by WAEC results but also by innovation, creativity, and moral conduct.
The current situation presents an opportunity— albeit a painful one, for national reckoning and rebirth. It is time for Nigeria to declare a state of emergency in the education sector, with timelines, targets, and accountability mechanisms. A multi-stakeholder approach involving governments, religious organisations, civil society, teachers’ unions, parents, and the private sector must be urgently convened.
The decline is reversible. Countries like Singapore, once plagued by educational backwardness, turned their fortunes around through visionary leadership and strategic planning. Nigeria can do the same.
The dismal 2025 WAEC results are not merely a record of failure; they are a mirror, reflecting the rot within our society, the negligence of our leaders, the complacency of our institutions, and the moral erosion of our homes. But the mirror, though painful, is necessary. It forces us to see, reflect, and hopefully, to act.
Let this be the moment that spurs Nigeria into bold reforms. Let us rise from the ruins of this academic tragedy and build a system that truly educates, truly empowers, and truly prepares our children for the future. For in the final analysis, no nation can rise above the quality of its education.
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Odaro, a columnist, lectures in the Department of Mass Communication, Auchi Polytechnic, Auchi.
