WAEC shuts down results portal, reviews 2025 WASSCE results

THE West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has announced a temporary suspension of access to the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results following the discovery of ‘technical bugs during an internal post-release review.

In a statement on Thursday, August 7, the examination body disclosed that the anomalies were linked to a newly introduced feature, “paper serialisation” deployed in core subjects including Mathematics, English Language, Biology, and Economics.

The innovation, WAEC explained, was part of efforts to strengthen its fight against examination malpractice.

It said the initiative aligned with international best practices in assessment.

However, the move, according to the examination body,  inadvertently caused discrepancies in the results uploaded to its result checker portal.

“An internal post result release procedure revealed some technical bugs in the results. The Council, being a responsive body that is sensitive to fairness and professionalism, has decided to urgently review and correct the technical glitches that led to the situation. As a result, access to the WASSCE (SC) 2025 results has been temporarily denied on the result checker portal,” the statement read in part.

Recall that shortly after the official release of results on August 4, many Nigerians and parents raised alarm over the mass failure of students and difficulties accessing the result portal.
Only 38.32 per cent of candidates obtained at least five credits, including English and Mathematics, nearly 50 per cent lower than the 72.12 per cent success rate recorded in 2024.

At a press briefing earlier in the week, WAEC Nigeria’s Head of Office, Amos Dangut, attributed the decline to new reforms, including the same paper serialisation as well as efforts to combat collusion in exam halls.

“This approach drastically reduced the incidence of collusion and made examination malpractice more difficult. We observed a dip in the performance of objective papers, but essay papers remained consistent with previous years. It’s a strong signal that candidates must rely on their own preparation,” Dangut said.

It was earlier reported that the decline in pass rate might also be linked to operational lapses during the examination period.

In May, this organisation reported that WAEC kept students in exam halls as late as midnight in several states, including Kwara and Osun, after the leak of the English Language paper.

Some students were forced to write the paper using torchlights, with many parents and rights groups criticising the Council for what they called ‘inhumane’ treatment.

The WAEC initially declined to comment but later admitted the delay was intended to “protect the integrity of our examinations.”

The fallout from these incidents led to increased scepticism from parents, education advocates, and Nigerians, many of whom have accused WAEC of failing students.

The Council, in what it described as a ‘responsive’ and ‘fair’ approach in its latest statement, assured stakeholders that the issues were being addressed with urgency and transparency.

The Council said the technical bugs were expected to be resolved within 24 hours, while also urging candidates who previously checked their results to do so again after the correction window.

“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 added.

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The WAEC’s troubles echo a similar scandal involving the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), which also reviewed the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) results  following the initial mass failure recorded in this year’s examination.

Recall that, on Monday, May 12, JAMB said it had launched an investigation into numerous complaints regarding the recently released 2025 UTME results.

This followed candidates’ poor performance and protests that greeted the release of the results,  as 78.5 per cent of the candidates scored below 200, a benchmark commonly used for admission into competitive programmes in Nigerian federal universities.

According to JAMB, of the 1,955,069 registered candidates, 1,534,654 scored below 200, while the results of 39,834 candidates were withheld for various reasons.

Meanwhile, following the review of the examination, JAMB said that 117,373 or 6.08 per cent scored above 250 points and 565,988 or 29.3 per cent scored above 200 points.

It also added that 1.3 million candidates, or 70.7 per cent, scored less than 200 points in the UTME.