Nigeria’s Educational Sector is Facing Its Worst Existential Crisis

In one particular harrowing clip that has gained virality on social media, students, who had been scheduled to write the English examination of this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), can be seen shuffling around a dimly lit classroom agitatedly, lighting candles to ward off the onslaught of darkness: as of around 7pm they had yet to write the exam which was supposed to have been held that morning. It’s complete pandemonium in the room. Students run around in a panicked frenzy, most wielding their phone flashlights. There’s not a single teacher or instructor in sight. 

Countless videos like this, from across Nigeria, abound on social media. In some, the students, shrouded in darkness, can be seen scurrying about, some protesting the injustice with muted murmurs, others ostensibly reacting to the incongruity of the whole situation with equally anachronistic acts. “Pressure ti wa,” one such student says, invoking the ubiquitous pop culture phrase to express the intensity of the situation. In other videos, students can be seen squished together in dimly-lit, claustrophobic classrooms as they write their exams abetted by candles, flashlights and whatever other improvisational light source they can manage. 

Stretching back decades, WASSCE, at least in Nigeria, has been mired in a hideous assortment of problems. Examination malpractice in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination is so entrenched and pervasive as to be regarded as the status quo. To paint a clearer portrait showing the extent of the rot, there are places commonly referred to as special centers where, in a startling inversion of the orthodoxy, cheating is not just allowed but assisted and encouraged. There’s also the long-running problem of logistical and organizational issues, a problem which has only worsened in recent years, culminating in the travesty of the past few days. It’s a truism that the events of the past few days—flashlight-wielding students having to write exams as late as 12am in the morning—is a national disgrace; but it has to be said. 

This ignominy becomes more frightening when one considers that it happened mere weeks after the infamous “JAMB glitches”which affected the results of some four hundred thousand students. Echoing the casual callousness of JAMB’s harried press release which opened with the line “Man proposes, God disposes,” WAEC Nigeria’s press release addressing the situation is totally bereft of empathy. “The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) acknowledges the challenges currently being faced during the conduct of WASSCE for School Candidate, 2025 including the delay in the timely conduct of English Language Paper 2,” it begins. 

Crucially, the press release borrows JAMB’s strategy of claiming to have done their possible best, to have anticipated possible hitches, only to be thwarted by forces outside of their control. “Despite our best efforts, we encountered logistical hurdles, security concerns and sociocultural factors that negatively influenced our operations,” it reads, “we faced considerable challenges primarily due to our major aim of preventing leakage of any paper. While we successfully achieved our objective, it inadvertently impacted the timeliness and seamless conduct of the examination.”

If there’s anything to be taken from all of this—WAEC Nigeria’s shambolic conduct, taken together with JAMB’s botched exercise this year—it’s that the problems of Nigeria’s embattled educational system have metastasized to a point where the sector is seemingly hanging on a thread for its dear life. It’s important to note that WAEC conducts Senior School Certificate Examinations in five English speaking countries in West Africa—Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia. And yet, Nigeria is the only country where this level of ineptitude transpired. In other climes, the events of the past few days would be inconceivable. This is not to suggest that these countries are without their own challenges. We however need to understand the extent of the absurdity that transpired last week. To further buttress this point, until the travesty happened, despite the many problems Nigeria’s educational system is steeped in, nobody would have guessed things would sink this low. 

In one 1982 issue of the West Africa Magazine, a correspondent reports a growing malaise towards WAEC, on account of its “rampant, uncontrolled and unchecked operations.” This points to the fact that the problems of the examinations council have simmered for decades and that the events of last week are the culmination of unchecked rot. In what reality does Dr. Amos Dangut, the head of WAEC Nigeria, think it’s remotely normal to keep thousands of students, many of them below the legal age, waiting till midnight to write their examination? Not minding the security risks and psychological trauma his actions might visit on these students, he kept them hostage because of reports of questions leaking. 

What happened to rescheduling the paper for another day? Or instituting guardrails to prevent questions from leaking? If you suspect this has something to do with the fractured way of thinking and general nonchalance that pervades many sectors of Nigerian society, you’re not wrong. Anyone pretending that they can—with a single essay or tweet or rhetoric—simply prescribe the magical solution that will solve Nigeria’s education problems, is simply acting in conceit. The problems are too manifold, too entrenched, having festered not for months or years but for decades. The path to change however starts with recognizing that all of this is abnormal and calling those in charge to account. 

Amid the unrelenting barrage of negative news that dominates our media cycle, it’s easy to heave a sigh of exasperation and resign oneself to the inevitability of our situation. To resign oneself to such a fatalistic worldview, however, is to automatically forgo the possibility of change. And things can change, things change, even in Nigeria. To cite a recent example, weeks ago, we collectively mounted immense pressure on JAMB, forcing them not just into admitting to error but to offer remedial actions. This might seem small but, to quote a popular aphorism, great things start from small places. I’ll push this a bit further by arguing that there is nothing small about positivity affecting the fortunes of some four hundred thousand students, most of them adolescents with their entire futures ahead of them. Similarly, when we consider the WAEC debacle we must resist the tendency for it to slide into the realm of normalcy.