The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has confessed to making errors in this year’s Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE) results, forcing a major revision.
WAEC now says 1,239,884 candidates—or 62.9% of the 1,969,313 who sat for the exam—secured credit passes in at least five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
That’s a huge jump from the earlier figure of 754,545 candidates (38.3%) announced earlier this week.
How the error happened
At a press briefing in Lagos on Friday, WAEC’s Head of National Office, Dr. Amos Dangut, explained that the problem came from a wrongly applied scoring key in English Language Objective Tests (Paper 3).
The mix-up happened due to paper serialization, a method also used by other exam bodies, and only affected candidates who wrote the paper-based test—computer-based exam takers were spared.
“We deeply regret the emotional and mental distress caused,” Dangut said, admitting the situation was “very embarrassing” for the council.
Impact on candidates
The initial results shocked many students, parents, and teachers—especially those who had strong UTME scores but suddenly failed English in the SSCE.
WAEC has now fixed the anomaly and urged all candidates to recheck their results on www.waecdirect.org. Updated digital certificates will be available 48 hours after checking.
Performance still dipped compared to last year
While the updated pass rate is much higher than the flawed results, it’s still lower than last year’s 72.1%, marking a 9.16% drop in performance.
WAEC says schools will soon receive updated result listings, and promised to take steps to prevent a repeat of this year’s error—though it did not reveal if anyone will face disciplinary action.
