How to Collect Original WAEC Certificate: Important Steps
Ideally, you push to collect your original WAEC certificate, especially after passing your WASSCE. This is because this original WAEC certificate is one of the salient proofs you can present that shows you completed your secondary school education.
For those who don’t know about these exams, before we press further on how to collect your original WAEC certificate, we would take a little detour on the body, WAEC, and the exams they conduct, WASSCE. This includes the regular dates for these examinations and why it is important to collect your original WAEC certificate if you wrote WASSCE.
Let’s get right into it already. As we have mentioned earlier, WAEC, the West African Examination Council, is the body in charge of conducting senior school certificate leaving examinations known as WASSCE in Nigeria and other West African nations. This WASSCE is often paraded as the minimum academic requirement in these nations even though there are courses you can study with mathematics in Nigerian universities.
WAEC, the body conducts two different types of examinations, which occur thrice a year. They are the First diet (Private) which happens around February/March Second diet (School) which happens around May/June and lastly, the Third diet (Private), which happens around November/December. It is worth mentioning that the third diet is generally referred to as General Certificate Examinations (GCE).
Following the completion of these examinations, the examination body, WAEC, issues what is known as the original WAEC certificate, which is always available ninety days or average, three months after the release of the results.
You would expect that students, after sitting for these examinations, you would take appropriate steps to collect your original WAEC certificate; unfortunately, such isn’t the case. The organizing body, WAEC, has said they have the results of those who failed to collect their original WAEC certificate in their custody.
This has led to the examining body, WAEC, in a bid to forestall such occurrences, to impose penalties on those who default in processing their original WAEC certificate within the space of one year.
Therefore, regardless of which examination or what time of the year it was written, as a student you ought to collect your original WAEC certificate within the one-year window.
In the following paragraphs, we will outline the steps on how to collect your original WAEC certificate, whether you are a school candidate or a private candidate. The exciting thing about this process is that you can get them offline from the school you wrote the exams or place a request online.
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How to collect your original WAEC certificate as a school candidate (May/June) offline
The process to collect your original WAEC certificate as a school candidate is relatively easy because WAEC typically sends the certificates to the school you wrote these examinations within six months after the release of the results at no extra cost except that the school has the right to charge you if you don’t collect your original WAEC certificate as and when due.
How to collect your original WAEC certificate as a private student candidate offline
You are probably wondering who are private candidates and school candidates. Private candidates are those students who write WASSCE in external centers approved by WAEC.
These sets of students can pick up their original WAEC certificate at the WAEC offices in the state where they wrote their exams. If you wrote your WASSCE in Lagos, you should go to the WAEC office situated in Lagos and not any other state.
At this juncture, we have wrapped the offline means of getting your original WAEC certificate; we will now focus on how to get these certificates online. The online procedures vary however they are similar in that you have to request them.
How to collect your original WAEC certificate as a private candidate online
The West African Examination Council, WAEC recently introduced the electronic certificate management system, a portal to assist private candidates in quickly processing their original WAEC certificates online.
Recall that we said that students who wrote WASSCE could only expect to get their results at the WAEC offices where they wrote their exams. The partnership WAEC has made with the Nigerian Postal Service, NIPOST, has eradicated that limitation, which means you can have your original WAEC certificate delivered to you at any location, irrespective of where you wrote your WASSCE.
Upon completing online registration and payment of the required fees, students can expect to receive their original WAEC certificates in their registered locations.
First off, you must log in to https://certrequest.waec.ng and fill in all the relevant details. Also, you must know that any location doesn’t mean at your doorsteps but at the WAEC office nearest to you at the time.
However, before you collect your original WAEC certificate, you must provide a verifiable means of identification. This could be the National Identity Card, Driver’s license, or International Passport.
Another exciting thing to note about this latest procedure is that you have the privilege of monitoring the processes online every step. But, all of this doesn’t come at a cheap. You would be required to pay a sum of four thousand, seven hundred nairas only (N 4,700) through USSD, debit card, physically in a bank to any of the specified bank accounts.
Remember, we talked about how you can track this online process. Well, in this paragraph, we will walk you through the guidelines. First, log in to https://certrequest.waec.ng and click on the Tab that bears Check Status. You would be prompted to enter your 10-digit WAEC examination number and the Payment Reference Number. Once you are done with this, click on the status update.
Conclusion
Recall we talked about how WAEC has regulated the process you take to collect your original WAEC certificate. The examination body achieves this through what is known as custody fees.
It is the penalty charged to those who process their certificates late. For instance, below four years, the custody fee is N3, 500 and between five to nine years, the custody fee is N8,500.
Finally, you should also know that WAEC doesn’t give original certificates twice hence why you should take care of it. Put your original certificate away from the prying eye of toddlers, and don’t laminate your certificates.
