The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has revised the 2025 WASSCE results for school candidates in Nigeria, raising the number of students who obtained credits in at least five core subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, from 38.32% to 62.96%, following the discovery and correction of a grading error.
Dr. Amos Dangut, Head of the Nigeria National Office of WAEC, made this known on Friday at a press briefing, where he explained that the correction followed an internal post-examination review.
He stated that this technical error partly accounted for the sharp decline in performance earlier reported, noting that schools that used the Computer-Based Test (CBT) mode were not affected.
Corrected performance statistics
Following the correction, in the corrected results, 1,239,884 candidates, representing 62.96%, obtained credits in at least five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, compared to the previously announced 38.32%.
“In total, 1,794,821 candidates or 91.14% secured credits in at least five subjects with or without English and Mathematics.
“The results of 191,053 candidates, representing 9.7% of the total, remain withheld over various cases of examination malpractice, which are under investigation,” Dangut said.
Backstory
WAEC had initially released the 2025 WASSCE results for school candidates on August 4, 2025. A total of 1,969,313 candidates sat for the exam, 976,787 males and 992,526 females.
Nairametrics reported that only 38.32% of candidates who sat for the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) secured five credits, including English and Mathematics—marking a significant 33.8% drop in performance compared to the previous year.
Out of the 1,969,313 candidates who wrote the exam, 1,718,090, representing 87.24% obtained credits in at least five subjects regardless of the subject combination.
However, WAEC withheld 192,089 results, or 9.75% of the total, over exam malpractice, including organised cheating and mobile phone use during the tests. The Council said affected students will be notified through their schools once investigations are concluded.
Following the release, the Council identified a discrepancy in the grading following the discovery of technical errors in Mathematics, English Language, Biology, and Economics due to the use of a wrong serialised code file during the printing process. This led to a widespread review and correction in the interest of transparency.
WAEC apologises to candidates, parents
Dr. Dangut expressed regret over the distress caused by the grading error. He described the state of affairs as a trying time for the management at WAEC.
“We are doing everything we can to ensure that such a dismal situation does not recur.
“We acknowledge the emotional ordeal that candidates, parents, teachers, school administrators, ministries of Education, the media, and other well-meaning stakeholders must have had to deal with,” he said
- Candidates have been advised to recheck their results on the WAEC portal, www.waecdirect.org.
- Digital certificates will be available for application 48 hours after result confirmation.
WAEC urged state governments owing the Council to settle their debts so that affected students’ results can be released.
why is some result held and some were released at the same centre