WAEC disowns school list in 192,000 withheld results scandal
The West African Examinations Council has dissociated from a viral list of 151 secondary schools whose candidates’ results for the May/June 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examinations have been withheld.
WAEC had on Monday announced the results of the 2025 WASSCE, where the results of 192,089 candidates, amounting to 9.75 per cent, were declared as being withheld over alleged involvement in various forms of examination malpractice.
The viral letter, dated August 4, 2025, titled “Urgent notice to the following secondary schools regarding withheld results,” had the Director, Examination Malpractice and Irregularities, WAEC Nigeria, Dr Florence Ajayi, as signatory.
It held that the results of the candidates of the listed schools were withheld over their alleged involvement in examination malpractice, asking the principals of the mentioned schools to report to the WAEC Lagos Zonal Office within 10 working days.
The letter further read, “All school principals are to appear before the WAEC Investigative Panel on or before August 16th, 2025, with supporting documentation and the affected candidates’ exam scripts (where applicable).”
However, WAEC, via its official handle, @waecnigeria, on Tuesday, said the list should be ignored as it did not emanate from its official handles.
The WAEC statement read, “Kindly ignore any message listing schools whose results were supposedly cancelled. Meanwhile, WAEC will never ask any centre to bring scripts of candidates to the office. Where would they get them from?
“Do not accept any message that is not on our handles and accredited media.”
Monday’s result announced by Head of WAEC National Office, Dr Amos Dangut, showed that 38.32 per cent of the 1,969,313 candidates who sat the examination obtained credits and above in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
This year’s result was a sharp decline of 33.8 per cent compared to the 72.12 per cent pass rate recorded in the 2024 WASSCE.
Dangut attributed the significant decline in candidates’ performance to the newly implemented anti-malpractice measures.
