The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has withheld the results of 192,089 candidates who sat for the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) over allegations of examination malpractice.

This was disclosed by Dr. Amos Josiah Dangut, Head of the Nigeria National Office of WAEC, during a press briefing held on Monday, August 4, 2025, at the Council’s national headquarters in Yaba, Lagos.

According to him, out of the 1,969,313 candidates who wrote the examination across 23,554 secondary schools nationwide, only 754,545 candidates representing 38.32% secured credits and above in at least five subjects including English Language and Mathematics, the minimum requirement for admission into Nigerian universities.

The performance marks a significant drop of 33.8% compared to the 72.12% recorded in 2024, which WAEC attributed largely to its intensified efforts to curb examination malpractice.

Dr. Dangut explained that a major contributor to the decline in overall performance was the Council’s newly introduced serialization system for objective test papers in English Language, Mathematics, Biology, and Economics.

This system, which assigns unique paper types to individual candidates, was designed to prevent collusion during exams.

“Despite our prior warnings, some candidates attempted to copy from one another even though they had different versions of the questions. This significantly affected their scores in the objective tests,” Dr. Dangut noted.

A further breakdown of the results revealed that while 1,718,090 candidates (87.24%) obtained credits in a minimum of five subjects regardless of English and Mathematics, only 754,545 met the benchmark for tertiary education entry by including both core subjects.

Among these, female candidates outperformed their male counterparts, with 407,353 females (53.99%) achieving the benchmark compared to 347,192 males (46.01%).

Out of the total number of candidates, 1,517,517 (77.06%) had their results fully processed and released, while 451,796 (22.94%) are still being processed due to errors or other issues.

Despite challenges such as inflation, registration delays, and the activities of rogue website operators, WAEC reported a successful conduct of the 2025 examination, which ran from April 24 to June 20.

Candidates can access their results online via www.waecdirect.org.

LAGOS EYE NEWS reports thT those with withheld results will be contacted individually after investigations are concluded.

The Council also urged candidates to apply for their digital certificates, which will be available 48 hours after results are accessed.