2025 WAEC MASS FAILURE: WHO IS FOOLING WHO?
By: Fr. Dr. Okhueleigbe Osemhantie Ãmos|August 7, 2025
It was not a bolt from the blue when the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) released the 2025 May/June WASSCE results on Monday August 5, 2025, revealing that only 38.32% of candidates obtained credit passes in five subjects, including Mathematics and English. This figure represents a staggering failure rate of over 61%—the worst in recent history. While WAEC cloaked this debacle in bureaucratic language, the facts are bare and brutal: out of 1,841,151 candidates, only 715,452 met the basic benchmark for university admission. What is most infuriating, however, is not the mass failure itself—though that is tragic—but the deliberate efforts by WAEC, some media outfits, and certain stakeholders to twist the narrative, mask the crisis, and divert attention from a national tragedy.
WAEC’s Head of Nigeria Office, Dr. Amos Josiah Dangut, dressed the numbers in euphemisms. He said that the 38.32% represents those who obtained “credit and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.” But let’s call it what it is: a national educational collapse. And when Dangut dared to say this year’s results showed a “marginal improvement” from 76.36% to 80.58% in candidates who obtained at least five credits (regardless of English and Maths), one wondered: how does an increase in passes without English and Maths constitute progress?
The real benchmark for tertiary education in Nigeria is credit in five subjects including English and Mathematics. That has not changed. So, quoting statistics that exclude this key requirement is akin to celebrating a sick patient’s improved appetite while ignoring that his heart has stopped beating.
Even more disappointing is the complicity of some mainstream media in sanitising the narrative. Some headlines screamed that over 80% passed, without specifying that these passes excluded English and Mathematics. Only a few outlets, like The Cable, stuck to the hard truth. The attempt by others to reframe the statistics to look like a success story is not only disingenuous—it is dangerous. It deprives the nation of a moment of collective introspection.
In numerous centres across Nigeria, English Language examination was conducted under severely compromised conditions. Students were made to sit for the paper late at night, exhausted from hunger and forced to use candles and torchlights to write. Some returned home as late as 11:00 p.m., navigating unsafe roads and facing various hazards. Those caught in the rain on their way home fared even worse. Given these dire circumstances, it is not only unfair but utterly untenable to interpret widespread poor performance in English as a true reflection of students’ abilities
Equally baffling and indefensible is the situation where students who excel—earning As and Bs in subjects such as Mathematics, Sciences, Arts and Social Studies—are awarded straight F9 or a pitiable E8 in English Language. This glaring inconsistency points to a deeper issue: a fundamental flaw in the setting of the examination questions, administration, or marking of the English examination. It raises urgent questions regarding the appropriateness of the examination content, the fairness of the marking scheme, and the alignment between the taught curriculum, the examined material, and the compromised conditions under which the examination was conducted.
This critique is offered without prejudice to the widespread malpractice that continues to plague the Nigerian examination system—a systemic rot involving students, teachers, invigilators, parents, and school proprietors alike. While corruption and collusion undoubtedly erode the integrity of educational assessments, such malpractices must not be used as a blanket justification for mass failure. Instead, they call for urgent accountability and comprehensive reform across the entire examination ecosystem.
A similar smokescreen was used during the recent Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) results fiasco, where barely a few thousand scored above 300 out of over a million candidates. Rather than confront the broken system, the response from some quarters was to shame students and praise JAMB for “maintaining standards.” The same playbook is being used now by WAEC.
Let’s not pretend this is how other countries operate. In Ghana, when only 60% of candidates passed English and Maths in 2023, there was national uproar and an emergency education summit. In South Africa, the Ministry of Basic Education releases Matric results with clear breakdowns of subject-based performance and candid commentary on national standards. In the United Kingdom, the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) maintains transparent reporting and immediately flags downward trends as areas of concern.
But in Nigeria, we romanticise decline. We confuse public relations with policy. We paint decay with pastel colours and call it reform. When over 1.1 million Nigerian students fail to meet the minimum university requirement, it is not a time for spin—it is a time for soul-searching. The tragedy is not just in the statistics, but in the loss of dreams. Millions of children in Nigeria face a bleak future because our system failed them.
What should WAEC have done? First, own the reality. Call it a crisis. Then convene a stakeholder summit involving federal and state Ministries of Education, curriculum developers, teacher unions, and private education providers. Launch a national education emergency response plan, not unlike a pandemic response. Publish item-level performance data to help schools and parents know where students are struggling. Stop the window-dressing.
Education is too sacred to be politicised. Nigeria cannot afford another generation of ill-prepared youths. The 2025 WAEC results are not just bad—they are catastrophic. And until we name the failure for what it is, we will keep failing our children.
Thanks for reading
Fr. Dr. Okhueleigbe Osemhantie Ãmos is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Uromi and a Lecturer at the Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
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