There has been widespread outrage and concern following reports that secondary school students were forced to sit for their WAEC examination at midnight under harsh conditions marked by power outages and rising insecurity.
NaijaOnPoint Nigeria reports that SS3 students on Wednesday wrote English Language in the ongoing May/June 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) late in the evening.
The English Language 2 (Essay) is meant for two hours, from 8.30 am to 10.30 am, while English Language 1 (Objective) is for one hour (10.30 am to 11.30 am).
The students were kept for hours with no explanations from the council about the delay.
At about 7.45 pm, many SS3 students were seen going home after writing the examination in the evening in Lagos and other states.
Initially, the management of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) kept mute about the development when NaijaOnPoint sought their reaction at 8.00 pm on Wednesday.
WATCH VIDEO:
The incident, which has sparked reactions from parents, educators, and civil society groups, raises serious questions about the preparedness and fairness of the examination process in certain parts of the country.
Meanwhile, NaijaOnPoint Nigeria reports that parents under the aegis of the National Parents Teachers Association of Nigeria (NAPTAN) have condemned the poor conduct of the English Language examination in the ongoing Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSCE) organised by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).
To this end, the parents called on WAEC to cancel the examination conducted on Wednesday due to the poor outing of WAEC and to reschedule the examination at a proper time and date, which will be devoid of the anomalies witnessed when the examination was held on Wednesday.
The National Publicity Secretary of NAPTAN, Dr Ademola Ekundayo, in a statement made available to Daily Sun, bemoaned the examination body and lamented the hardship the students went through, adding that parents were also put in serious turmoil as the whereabouts of their children and wards could not be ascertained on time.
The examination, which was scheduled for 4.00 pm according to the timetable released by WAEC, did not start in all the examination centres across many states of the country until 8.00 pm, making it difficult for the candidates sitting for the exams to see clearly.
In many of the examination centres, telephones were used as the source of illumination, just as many candidates who sat for the examination were in darkness throughout the period of the examination.
Dr Ekundayo, who condemned WAEC, called for the outright cancellation of the English Language examination held on Wednesday, as, according to him, no reasonable results can come out of the examination.
He also called on the examination body to apologise to the candidates who sat for the examination, lamenting that many of the candidates were subjected to hazards in the process of writing the exam, just as the parents were put into serious anxiety regarding the safety of their children and wards.
“This terrible situation is unexpected, and it is not acceptable to the parents. The National Parents Teachers Association of Nigeria condemns this in strong terms and calls for the immediate cancellation of the charade referred to as an examination. This was not an examination but a mere jamboree, and we, as parents, will not accept that,” he stated.
He called on the Federal Ministry of Education to intervene in the matter, threatening that parents all over the country will troop to the streets to demand justice on behalf of the students who sat for the exam if justice is not done.
Also, Nigerians has taken to various social media platforms to call out the examination while decrying the level of unprofessionalism by WAEC.
