The Federal Government has restated its commitment to transist to Computer-Based Testing (CBT) for the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO) by 2026.
The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa,said this policy will end examination malpractice in Nigeria’s education sector.
His comments came amid growing concerns about the integrity of public examinations, especially following the release of statistics from the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), which revealed that over 1.5 million of the 1.95 million candidates scored below 200 out of 400.
Responding to questions about the poor UTME results and what they indicate about learning outcomes at the senior secondary school level, Alausa said, “That’s a big concern, and it’s a reflection of exams being done the proper way.
The minister revealed that the government had conducted a comprehensive review of the country’s examination systems shortly after he assumed office.
He further announced that WAEC and NECO would begin migrating their examinations to CBT from November 2025, starting with objective papers, with full implementation—covering essay components—by May/June 2026.
