Nigeria's declining performance in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination has prompted the Head of the Nigeria National Office of the West African Examinations Council, Dr Amos Dangut, to call for an urgent review of human and material resources in the country's schools.

Dangut raised the concerns during a press briefing at the council's national office in Yaba, Lagos, following growing attention on Ghana's dominance in the 2025 WASSCE results, where three Ghanaian students claimed the top positions among 2,612,830 candidates drawn from The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.

The three students, Huda Suleman, Paula Suwo, and Matthea Andoh, were recognised at the 74th Annual Council Meeting of WAEC in March as having recorded the highest cumulative scores in the examination for school candidates.

Nigeria's overall performance in the same sitting revealed that only 754,545 of the 1,969,313 candidates who sat the examination obtained credits and above in at least five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, representing 38.32%.

Dangut questioned whether Nigerian schools were adequately equipped to support learning outcomes that could match regional peers.

"Do the schools have adequately qualified teachers? This is a question to answer. The facilities, are there sufficient examination facilities? Are the laboratories well equipped? Is the environment conducive to teaching and learning?" he queried.

He clarified that WAEC's role was limited to providing examination data and not formulating educational policy, adding that the responsibility for acting on performance trends rested with education planners and managers.

"Ours is to provide the data, the information. And it is for education planners and managers to take it and formulate policies that will change it. We are not really a research organisation," Dangut remarked.

He acknowledged that Ghana's current dominance represented a shift from historical trends, noting that Nigeria had previously produced top performing WASSCE candidates over many years.

"You see, the world is dynamic. If you follow the trend in performance, there were times Nigerians were the ones collecting all the prizes," he added.