WASSCE 2025: WAEC Withholds Results of Students Sponsored by Indebted States

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has announced that it will not release the 2025 WASSCE results of candidates sponsored by state governments that have yet to settle their outstanding registration fees.

Amos Dangut, Head of WAEC’s Nigeria Office, made this disclosure during a press briefing in Lagos on Monday, where he officially released the results of the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). He noted that while most candidates could access their results, those sponsored by defaulting states would have to wait until payments were made.

“I need not restate the fact that the results of candidates who are sponsored by states indebted to the Council will not be released now until payment is made,” Dangut said.
“We appeal to the concerned to do the needful to enable the affected schools and candidates access their results.”

He declined to name the states involved, citing the fluid nature of the situation. However, he revealed that the number of indebted states had dropped as of Monday morning.

“As of yesterday, we had four states that had outstanding fees, but early this morning, I got information about two states taking it up,” he said. “So, we have just about two states. In fact, I got a call … that they are with the various ministries right now trying to tidy up the payments.”

This issue is not new. In 2023, WAEC reported that eight states were indebted, with Zamfara and Niger among the largest defaulters. Zamfara, under former Governor Bello Matawalle, reportedly owed the Council approximately N1.6 billion — a debt inherited by the administration of Governor Dauda Lawal.

In a 2023 interview with Premium Times, Mustapha Kaura, spokesperson to Governor Lawal, explained that the administration intended to settle the debt in full or in instalments once it received approval from the state executive council.

True to its word, the Zamfara government announced in May 2025 that it had cleared the bulk of its debt to WAEC and NECO, paying N1.4 billion to resolve arrears from 2018 to 2022.

“The swift payment of the outstanding debt to WAEC and NECO has relieved the stranded Zamfara students, who completed their final exams but could not proceed due to the examination bodies withholding their results,” a government statement read.
“For the West African Examination Council (WAEC), Governor Dauda Lawal has paid the outstanding bill of one billion four hundred million naira that the previous administrations owed from 2018 to 2022.”

This year, a total of 1,969,313 candidates sat for the examination, out of 1,973,365 registered across 23,554 recognised secondary schools in Nigeria. WAEC said 1,517,517 results — representing 77.06% — have been fully processed and released, while 451,796 results (22.94%) are still undergoing processing due to various issues.