The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has officially admitted to grading errors in the recently released results of the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for school candidates.
Speaking at a press briefing on Friday at the council’s national office in Yaba, Lagos, the Head of WAEC Nigeria, Dr. Amos Dangut, revealed that the discrepancies arose from the marking of serialised objective papers a flaw that has triggered nationwide criticism from students, parents, and education stakeholders.
According to a report, the errors were traced to a wrongly assigned serialised code file used in the scoring of the English Language Objective Test (Paper 3), which led to the application of incorrect answer keys. While Mathematics, Biology, and Economics were also serialised, candidates who sat for the examination using the computer-based mode were not affected.
This revelation comes just days after WAEC’s online result-checking portal was abruptly shut down on Wednesday, with the council initially attributing the move to “technical issues.” The shutdown, announced via WAEC’s official X (formerly Twitter) handle, @waecnigeria, drew swift backlash, particularly after a significant number of candidates recorded unusually poor performance — with English Language results attracting the most public outrage.
WAEC has now assured candidates that the affected results have been reviewed and corrected. With the adjustments, 1,239,884 candidates, representing 62.96 per cent obtained five credits, including English and Mathematics, compared to the previously reported 38.32 per cent. However, the figure still reflects a 9.16 per cent drop from the 72.12 per cent performance recorded in 2024.
Dr. Dangut offered an unreserved apology on behalf of WAEC Nigeria, describing the incident as “very embarrassing” and pledging that steps have been taken to ensure such errors do not recur.