WAEC has withheld Lagos and Ebonyi among other states 2025 WASSCE results over unpaid fees.

NaijaOnPoint Nigeria reports that the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has announced that candidates sponsored by state governments owing registration fees will not be able to access their 2025 WASSCE results until those debts are settled.

Affected states include Lagos, Zamfara, Ebonyi, and several others yet to be disclosed officially.

The Council made this known during a press briefing on Monday at its national headquarters in Yaba, Lagos, shortly after announcing the official release of the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results via its X (formerly Twitter) handle.

Candidates are advised to check their results through the official WAEC portal: http://waecdirect.org.

Major Drop in Candidate Performance

WAEC’s Head of Nigeria National Office, Dr. Amos Dangut, revealed that out of 1,969,313 candidates who sat for the examination across 23,554 schools, only 754,545 (38.32%) obtained the minimum benchmark of five credits including English and Mathematics.

This represents a 33.8% decline compared to the 72.12% success rate recorded in 2024. Dangut attributed the sharp drop to WAEC’s newly introduced serialization of objective test papers in key subjects, which drastically curbed examination malpractice.

“We noticed reduced collusion due to serialized questions in subjects like English, Mathematics, Biology, and Economics,” Dangut said. “It’s a clear message that candidates must focus on proper preparation.”

Results Processing and Withheld Scores

WAEC deployed a real-time digital scoring system this year to accelerate result collation. The examination took place between April 24 and June 20, while coordination and marking were completed between July 3 and 21.

So far:

1,517,517 candidates (77.06%) have had their results fully processed and released.
451,796 candidates (22.94%) are still being processed due to technical issues expected to be resolved soon.
192,089 results (9.75%) are being withheld due to malpractice allegations, including the use of mobile phones and candidate collusion.

“This is a slight improvement from last year’s 11.92% withheld results,” Dangut noted. “Some culprits have already been apprehended and will face sanctions.”

Gender and Special Needs Statistics

Females outperformed males among the successful candidates:
- 407,353 females (53.99%)
- 347,192 males (46.01%)
A total of 12,178 special needs candidates participated:

WAEC confirmed that all were given appropriate support throughout the exam process.

New CBT Option Introduced

In a significant step toward digitisation, WAEC allowed candidates to choose between the traditional paper-and-pencil format and a Computer-Based Testing (CBT) option, part of its transition plan to go fully digital by 2026.

As pressure mounts on indebted states to pay up, thousands of candidates remain locked out of their results, with university admissions and scholarship deadlines looming. WAEC has not disclosed the full list of affected states but emphasized that access will only be granted once all debts are cleared.