The Nigerian Senate on Tuesday intervened decisively in a fast-escalating education crisis, halting the immediate implementation of new West African Examinations Council (WAEC) guidelines that threatened to derail the 2025/2026 Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) for hundreds of thousands of final-year secondary school students.
Lawmakers summoned the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, and the Head of WAEC Nigeria, Dr Amos Dangut, to explain why critical subjects including Computer Studies, Civic Education, and all trade/entrepreneurial subjects were abruptly removed from the examinable list just months before the 2026 May/June exams.
The Senate described the timing of the policy shift as “disastrous” and “capable of triggering unprecedented mass failure,” insisting that current SS3 students must be exempted.
“This is how mass failure begins” Senator Karimi Moving the motion, Senator Sunday Karimi (APC, Kogi West) accused WAEC of reneging on its earlier promise that the revised curriculum would only affect students currently in SS1, who will write the SSCE in 2027/2028.
Under the new rules, students in science, arts, and commercial tracks are left with a maximum of six core subjects far below WAEC’s own minimum requirement of eight and maximum of nine subjects for certification.
This, Karimi warned, would force candidates to scramble for two or three completely new subjects they have never been taught, with only months left before the examinations.
“Years of preparation by students, parents, and schools will be wiped out overnight,” he said. “Reform is welcome, but it must be humane and properly phased.”
Senators from both sides of the aisle lined up to condemn the rushed implementation:
Former NLC President, Senator Adams Oshiomhole (EDC, Edo North), lambasted the “habitual Nigerian disease” of announcing policies without groundwork: “We wake up, dream something, and implement immediately. Where are the teachers? Where are the laboratories? We must stop embarrassing ourselves as a nation.”
Senator Idiat Adebule (APC, Lagos Central), a former Lagos deputy governor, demanded to know why the National Council on Education, comprising all 36 state commissioners was bypassed.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Adeola Olamilekan (APC, Lagos West), insisted: “You cannot examine students on subjects they have never been taught.”
Senate President Godswill Akpabio questioned the wisdom of scrapping Computer Studies and Civic Education at a time Nigeria is pushing digital literacy and active citizenship.
After exhaustive debate, the Senate:
Mandated its Committee on Basic and Secondary Education to investigate the new guidelines and report back within two weeks.
Directed that the controversial changes be suspended for candidates sitting the 2025/2026 SSCE.
Insisted the revised curriculum should only apply from the 2027/2028 examination cycle.
The upper chamber’s swift action has been widely welcomed by parents, teachers’ unions, and civil society groups who had begun mobilising against the policy.
For the over 1.5 million candidates expected to sit the 2026 WASSCE, the Senate intervention may have just saved their academic future.
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