The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has announced the suspension of access to the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results for school candidates following the discovery of technical errors in Mathematics, English Language, Biology, and Economics during an internal review.
The examination body disclosed this in a statement signed by Moyosola Adesina, Acting Head of Public Affairs, and issued on Thursday from its headquarters in Yaba, Lagos.
According to the Council, the glitch was linked to a new security feature known as paper serializatio, which was deployed in these key subjects as part of its anti-exam malpractice strategy.
“The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) sincerely regrets to inform the general public of technical issues discovered during the internal review of the recently released results of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School Candidates (SC) 2025.
As part of our efforts to curb examination malpractice, the Council embarked on an innovation (paper serialization) already deployed by a national examination body. It is also worth noting that this is in line with best practices in assessment. The paper serialization was carried out in Mathematics, English Language, Biology, and Economics. However, an internal post result release procedure revealed some technical bugs in the results,” the statement read.
Review to be completed in 24 hours
WAEC has promised a swift resolution of the issue. To allow for this process, the result checker portal has been temporarily shut down, and students will be unable to access their results during this period.
“We extend our deep and sincere apologies to all affected candidates and the general public. We appreciate their patience and understanding as we work diligently to resolve this matter with transparency and urgency within the next twenty-four (24) hours. On this note, candidates who have previously checked their results are advised to re-check after 24 hours from now.
WAEC remains committed to upholding excellence, fairness and transparency in all our assessment processes,” the statement said.
What you should know
WAEC officially released the 2025 WASSCE results for school candidates on Monday, August 4, 2025
Nairametrics reported that only 38.32% of the approximately 1,969,313 candidates achieved credits in five subjects, including English and Mathematics. This marks a 33.8% drop in performance compared to last year, with 754,545 candidates meeting the benchmark. Notably, 192,089 results were withheld due to suspected examination malpractice.
Just two days later, on Wednesday, August 6, WAEC shut down its result-checking portal due to technical glitches. They assured the public that the system would be restored within 24 hours.
WAEC also denied false reports circulating online about the cancellation of results for a list of schools. They urged everyone to rely solely on their official communication channels and disregard third-party claims.
