Recall that Nigeria’s Federal Government ordered WAEC and NECO to adopt computer-based testing (CBT) fully by 2026, with WAEC and NECO objective tests switching to CBT in November 2025, according to Education Minister Dr. Tunji Alausa. This comes on the heels of JAMB’s UTME CBT, which fell flat. The move is sold as a credibility fix, but Nigeria isn’t ready for it.
In 2025, JAMB recorded 2,030,862 candidates registered, with around 1,955,069 sitting the exam; 1.5 million scored below 200, and the board withheld results for 39,834 candidates.
And boom, 379,997 candidates across 157 centres were affected by technical glitches, server issues during the exam, forcing partial resits. Registrar Ishaq Oloyede, visibly emotional, apologized:
“I hold myself personally responsible… this oversight went undetected before the release of the results.”
If JAMB, with equal to or less than 2 million users, couldn’t handle its CBT system without crashing, misuploading, or rescheduling nearly 20% of its candidates, what chance do WAEC and NECO have?
WAEC’s CBT history is even more brittle. In early 2024, only 8,285 private candidates sat a CBT WASSCE pilot, with just 42.07% obtaining five credits or more. That’s hardly a robust test of infrastructure or preparedness.
Now, WAEC plans to roll out CBT to 1.97 million school candidates. Also, in the 2024 WASSCE for school candidates, 1.8 million registered, with over 215,267 results withheld (11.92%) for alleged malpractice. If WAEC can’t keep up with cheating in a paper environment, moving fully online could only expose more gaps, security, infrastructure, or training.
Numbers don’t lie.
To recap…
2.03 million UTME registrants, 1.95 million sat
Over 1.5 million (75%) scored below 200
39,834 results withheld, and 379,997 candidates affected by glitches
If JAMB, with about 2 million users, managed to crash nearly 20% of test centres and leave nearly 40,000 results in limbo, how can WAEC and NECO, handling similar numbers, ensure flawless delivery? The answer is that they probably can’t.
CBT is tech, infrastructure, and trust. Unfortunately, Nigeria lacks all three.
Be reminded that CBT requires:
- Reliable internet and servers (but many centers in northern or rural areas lack stable electricity or connectivity).
- Trained invigilators, tech support, biometric scanning.
- Secure platforms that prevent cheating, hacks, or result tampering.
JAMB crashed on items 1 and 3. WAEC lagged on 2 and 3, given withheld papers and rising malpractice even before full CBT. Introducing CBT to WAEC/NECO while laptops, power backups, and networks remain patchy is simply delusional. What’s the FG even thinking? Who is or what is driving the man in the office signing these orders?
“Too early” doesn’t even begin to vover it. FG promises a 2026 CBT rollout. That’s just months away. Unless WAEC will run on JAMB’s infrastructure with a unique plan that solves JAMB’s problems or has retrofitted over 23,000 schools with consistent power and internet, and trained thousands of invigilators and IT staff, the shift to CBT is doomed.
CBT is a system overhaul that must be taken on step by step. But with the Federal Government’s 2026 deadline, they are skipping steps, ignoring pilot results, and risking a scale-up disaster worse than JAMB’s.
As for NECO, is there even data? If none, then there’s no Trust. NECO’s track record is even murkier with no public CBT pilots, compared to JAMB and WAEC. Expecting them to scale CBT by 2026 seems overly optimistic.
If we are being honest, Nigeria is in CBT denial. We’re implementing at scale because JAMB did CBT, but we haven’t learned from JAMB’s mistakes. If JAMB’s 2 million candidate rollout crashed, WAEC and NECO’s full-scale deployment with similar candidate numbers will crash harder.
There’s no override button for thousands of low-connectivity exam halls. Integrity can’t be legislated. If WAEC and NECO stumble even once, upload failures, misprinting, result backlog, they’ll destroy public trust in national exams.
WAEC and NECO CBT 2026 too early. This is not innovation. Instead, it is negligence. Nigeria needs phased, data-driven CBT expansion, not a press-release illusion of competence before we’re ready. But I dare the FG to go for it!
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