The West African Examinations Council (WAEC)’s recent decision to review and adjust the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results has sparked a wave of mixed reactions across the country.

BusinessDay findings show that while some stakeholders welcome the move as a step toward greater transparency and accuracy, others have raised concerns about its timing, fairness, and potential impact on students’ academic futures.

Gift Osikoya, a teacher in one of the foreign secondary schools in Nigeria, described the development as commendable as, according to her, it depicts accountability and transparency.

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“It’s commendable that WAEC took responsibility, acknowledging an error, making the necessary adjustments, and notifying the public promptly. This approach helps preserve trust and credibility in the examination system,” she said.

She emphasised that for many students, schools and families, the initial results would have sparked fear, anxiety, and major disruption to academic planning.

However, Osikoya advocated the need for safeguards. “This incident highlights the critical need for robust quality control mechanisms, especially when deploying innovations like paper serialisation. WAEC must ensure such systems are error-proof moving forward. Swift communication and instruction to recheck results help mitigate confusion but still, the initial error will have caused unnecessary stress.”

Elizabeth Ohaka, an early childhood education expert, said what WAEC did is a testament to the epileptic nature of systems in Nigeria’s society. “We react but are not proactive, putting square pegs in round holes, not learning from errors in the past and we seem to be perpetually going in circles.

“Everything rises and falls on leadership. Our leaders have failed us, they have failed our children and they must begin to take responsibility for their actions and inactions. Some people ought to be fired for this, and some should resign but, as always, nothing will happen and we will continue as if nothing went wrong,” she said.

Nubi Achebo, director of academic planning at the Nigerian University of Technology and Management (NUTM), said WAEC’s reversal of the 2025 WASSCE results due to grading errors is a big deal for students, parents, educators, and policymakers in Nigeria.

He emphasised that the incident highlights the importance of ensuring exam bodies have robust systems, and expressed worries the development could jeopardise the council’s proposed full Computer-Based Testing (CBT) examination in 2026.

He stressed that the incident raises questions about WAEC’s transition to (CBT) by 2026, considering Nigeria’s digital infrastructure gaps in rural areas.

Blessing Ema, a head teacher in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, was not comfortable with the development.

“Only God knows what is happening to WAEC this year. There’re all sorts of delays and errors during the examinations. This is the first time in my life that WAEC was written with foolscap sheets, because the answer sheets were not enough.

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“I don’t know what is wrong with WAEC, whether there’s a new management in place, something is just not right. I don’t even understand them because we downloaded the result of my student three days ago.

“And the children have collected all their results. So, I don’t understand what to make out of this.”

WAEC had initially released results, which showed only 38.32 percent of candidates achieving credits in five subjects, including English and Mathematics. However, it had to review it due to an error in marking the serialised objective paper for English Language (Paper 3).

The council also admitted to critical grading errors caused by a misapplied serialisation code in subjects like English Language, Mathematics, Biology, and Economics.

After reviewing and correcting these mistakes, WAEC announced that 91.14 percent of candidates obtained credits in at least five subjects, and 62.96 percent achieved five credits including English and Mathematics – a significant jump from the initial 38.32 percent.

WAEC also apologised for the error and asked candidates to re-check their results on the portal 48 hours from the announcement.