WAEC result crisis worsens as official alleges irregularities, glitches
By: Abudu Olalekan
The controversy over the 2026 West African Examinations Council (WAEC) WASSCE results for school candidates is only getting worse, after an official of the exam body raised fresh claims of glitches and irregularities.
In a video that’s now gone viral, Olanrewaju Fadehan, the Head of Examinations at the WAEC office in Anambra, said candidates who sat for the computer-based version of the exam were the ones mostly affected.
He explained that WAEC was initially expected to release the results between August 3 and 5, 2026 – and, as has been the tradition, many had looked towards a Monday release. But it didn’t quite go as planned.
“Obviously, there was a problem because the press was eagerly waiting on Monday, the scheduled date. There was a need to quickly do some last-minute adjustments. Something was wrong,” he said.
According to him, those last-minute adjustments ended up hitting CBT candidates hard, especially in Mathematics, English and Igbo. He also found it odd that a good number of candidates from the South-East performed poorly in Igbo, despite the language being widely spoken in the region.
For schools that had bought into WAEC’s push for CBT, the impact, he alleged, was even more painful. Some of them, he said, had spent over N60m to set up their CBT facilities in readiness for it.
Fadehan also claimed that some candidates were not given the right calculators during the exam – a development he believes contributed to the poor showing in Mathematics and other calculation-based subjects.
He said he’d raised these concerns while the exam was going on, and later petitioned the WAEC Board, the House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education and Examining Bodies, as well as the Minister of Education.
Rather than look into his complaints, he alleged, he was dragged into disciplinary proceedings and eventually placed on interdiction.
For that reason, he’s now calling on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to order a proper investigation into what led to the mass failure, particularly for those who took the CBT option.
On top of that, Fadehan also made allegations of financial impropriety against the WAEC management – touching on issues around the supply of calculators, students’ identity cards, and certain charges imposed on candidates and other service seekers.
He urged the Federal Government and relevant stakeholders to probe all of these claims, stressing that the credibility of Nigeria’s examination system goes a long way in determining the future of its students.
When Reportersroom reached out to WAEC for its reaction on Thursday, the Head of Public Affairs, Moyosola Adesina, kept it short: “No comment for now.”
As earlier reported by Reportersroom, WAEC has been under growing scrutiny over the integrity of its 2026 WASSCE for School Candidates. School administrators and education advocates have, for a while now, been raising concerns over grading anomalies and technical glitches linked to the expanded rollout of CBT. Many insist some high-performing students ended up with far lower grades than their academic records – or even past performances – would have suggested.
Olalekan A. Abudu is a seasoned and dedicated News Journalist at REPORTERS ROOM, with over eight years of experience. He specializes in politics, climate change, health, and education, while also covering security, economic, and judicial issues. Committed to accuracy and balanced reporting, Olalekan exemplifies the principles of public-interest journalism.
