She stood under the humming ceiling fan of the school’s ICT lab and unboxed the fifth laptop in the stack — another glossy machine that smelled faintly of plastic and possibility. Outside, children’s voices drifted across the compound; inside, a single socket threatened to spoil the dream.
The headmistress rubbed her temple and imagined a line-item budget with no room for a 40kVA generator, a dedicated server, or 250 machines plus 10% backup. If WAEC’s new rule becomes law in practice, many such labs will be racing against time, and money.
Order From WAEC
At a sensitisation event in Port Harcourt, WAEC’s Head of Examinations, Lucky Njoagwuani, made the requirements plain: schools that want to host the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) under the new computer-based testing (CBT) regime must provide a minimum of 250 functional laptops (with 10% backups), a robust server able to run 250 systems simultaneously, a Local Area Network, CCTV monitoring, proper air-conditioning and lighting, uninterrupted power and a minimum 40kVA backup generator, and a holding/reception room for candidates.
WAEC says the move will cut logistics costs, tighten exam security and widen access. Schools that cannot meet those standards will be assigned to designated CBT centres.
WAEC has also reaffirmed its timetable: a full migration of school-based WASSCE to CBT by 2026. The Council has already trialled CBT for private candidates and insists the model is “here to stay.”
The upside — Faster, Safer, Cheaper
There’s real logic behind the push. CBT reduces the physical movement of exam papers across borders, shrinks opportunities for leakages that have plagued paper-based tests, and — at scale — can be cheaper than printing and couriering millions of answer booklets each year.
Properly run CBT gives immediate analytics, faster results, and the ability to test more varied cognitive skills (if the item bank and platform evolve). WAEC and its partners say this is modernization, aligning Nigeria with global assessment trends.
The Heart Of The Problem: Readiness Versus Reality
But the policy crunch is brutal when it hits the ground. Multiple expert voices and recent reporting warn that Nigeria may not be ready for a blanket switch.
Infrastructure gaps — unreliable power, patchy internet, uneven ICT literacy among teachers, and under-equipped rural schools — remain massive hurdles.
Technical glitches during national CBT exercises in other exams have shown how quickly a well-intentioned computer test can veer into chaos if networks fail or power falters.
Put another way: WAEC’s “non-negotiables” are technical; the real negotiation will be social and financial.
A 250-machine lab with a 40kVA generator and server is far beyond the balance sheets of many public and private schools outside major cities.
WAEC suggests that schools unable to meet the standard will use designated centres — but that routing creates logistical and equity problems of its own.
Why The Switch Could Widen Inequality
The scary arithmetic isn’t just cost per machine. It is access and convenience. Schools in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt can more easily absorb capital upgrades, attract donors or win BOI/MSME funding singled out by industry groups; remote schools without those networks may be forced to bus students to distant CBT centres — adding travel cost, time lost to study, and the potential for administrative errors that affect candidates’ futures.
Unless policy explicitly funds the lagging schools, CBT risks becoming a gatekeeping mechanism that advantages already-privileged institutions.
Security And Privacy: Cameras Aren’t A Panacea
CCTV and proctoring tech can deter cheating, but they raise questions: who stores exam footage, for how long, under what encryption and with what oversight? Are data-protection rules in place to prevent misuse of students’ images and behavioural logs?
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Moving tests online also shifts the battlefield to cybersecurity, from DDoS attacks to compromised exam servers. A server capable of handling 250 simultaneous sessions is the minimum, but the architecture must be resilient, patched and monitored by skilled staff. That means recurring operational costs, not one-off purchases.
Funding And Public-private Fixes
WAEC’s Port Harcourt sensitisation involved partners — HP, Lenovo, Canon — and the Bank of Industry (BOI) was name-checked as a possible funder to help schools upgrade ICT centres.
NAPPS encouraged proprietors to explore BOI and the federal MSME assistance fund. Private donations and vendor financing can help, but they are piecemeal unless embedded in a national rollout plan that prioritises equity and maintenance budgets.
A raffle of ICT gadgets at the event hinted at goodwill — but goodwill is not a substitute for durable policy.
The Political Economy — Who Wins And Who Loses?
There will be winners: tech vendors, larger private schools, and designated CBT centres. There will be losers if the state does not act: small schools, rural communities, and families who cannot afford extra travel and logistics.
The stakes are not just fiscal — they are civic. How Nigeria navigates this transition will shape trust in its exams and in education as a ladder for social mobility. (
A Classroom With A Choice
WAEC’s deadline is a wake-up call. The country can meet it — but only if the rush to digitise is matched by a national plan that protects the poorest schools and the most vulnerable students. Otherwise, the CBT revolution will be a promise fulfilled for some and a locked gate for many.
