THE West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has released the corrected version of the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results for school candidates, revealing a significant improvement in performance statistics after a grading error was discovered and rectified.
Speaking at a press briefing on Friday at WAEC’s national office in Yaba, Lagos, the Head of WAEC Nigeria, Dr. Amos Dangut, expressed regret over the discrepancies, describing the incident as “deeply embarrassing.”
He admitted that an error in the marking of serialised papers, particularly the English Language Objective Test, had led to incorrect scores.
“This is very difficult for us to say, but we have to admit that it is very embarrassing,” Dangut said. “We discovered that a wrongly assigned serialised code file was used during the grading of English Language Paper 3, which resulted in miscalculated scores.”
The issue affected several subjects, including Mathematics, Biology, and Economics. However, candidates who wrote the exams via the computer-based testing mode were not affected.
Following the correction, 62.96% of the 1,969,313 candidates who sat the exam obtained at least five credits, including English and Mathematics. This marks a major improvement from the initially reported 38.32%. In total, 1,794,821 candidates—representing 91.14%—obtained five credits and above in at least five subjects, regardless of English and Mathematics.
Of those who passed with English and Mathematics, 657,819 (53.05%) were female, while 582,065 (46.95%) were male. Despite the improvement, the overall performance still shows a 9.16% decline compared to the 72.12% pass rate recorded in 2024.
WAEC disclosed that 12,178 special needs candidates sat for the exams, including visually impaired, hearing impaired, physically challenged, and mentally challenged students. Their results have also been released.
While 89.55% of results have been fully processed, results for 205,916 candidates (10.45%) are still pending due to technical issues, which the council says are being resolved.
Additionally, results of 191,053 candidates (9.7%) have been withheld over alleged involvement in examination malpractice. This is an improvement from the 11.92% withheld in 2024. Investigations are ongoing, and affected candidates can submit complaints via waecinternational.org/complaints.
Dr. Dangut urged candidates to check their results on www.waecdirect.org and apply for digital certificates, which will be available within 48 hours after verification. Hard copy certificates will be ready within 90 days.
He, however, noted that candidates sponsored by state governments owing WAEC would not be able to access their results until payments are made.
“We appeal to the concerned authorities to do the needful to enable affected schools and candidates to access their results,” he said.
Dangut apologised to students, parents, teachers, and education authorities for the inconvenience caused by the grading error.
“This is a trying time for us at WAEC. We are doing everything we can to ensure such a dismal situation does not recur,” he said, while appreciating the support of the Federal Government and relevant ministries during the review process.
