Nigerians felt relieved when the Nigeria Office of West African Examinations Council (WAEC) launched the WAEC digital certificate on October 20th, 2022.

This means that Nigerians can get their certificates in the comfort of their bedrooms, unlike when they have no choice but to undergo the rigorous process of getting them manually.

This is a step in the right direction, as the world is going digital; Nigerian institutions have no choice but to follow suit. The benefits of this digital innovation are enormous, as it will eliminate the bottlenecks and delays associated with getting a paper certificate.

Read also: WAEC releases 2024 WASSCE results; 215,267 withheld

The advantages of this digital certificate far outweigh that of the manual certificate. One significant advantage is that it will remove the stress and the rigorous effort people make to get the certificate manually. This means that regardless of where you are, you don’t need to go to the school where you write your exam to get your certificate.

Assuming you wrote your examination in Ogun State and relocated to Anambra, you don’t need to travel a long distance from Anambra to Ogun State to get your certificate as was before. This innovation by WAEC has taken the burden off you. Even if you are in another country, you don’t need to travel down to Nigeria to get your certificate, as you can get it at your fingertips.

Another advantage of this digital certificate is that it safeguards you from exploitation. If you obtain your certificate manually from the school where you wrote your exam, you may pay through the nose. You may be charged as high as N20,000, but with just N7,500, your certificate will be saved on your device.

Another significant benefit is that you can share it directly with any institution, organisation or recruitment agency, and they can confirm it directly from the WAEC digital platform, thereby reducing any chances of fraud. The need to also go to the cyber cafe to scan it is no longer an option.

Imagine that the school where you write your WAEC examination no longer exists. That means you will have to locate the WAEC office in the state where you write your examination to get your certificate, but with the digital certificate, you don’t have to go through that stress.

Your digital WAEC certificate is better saved in your device with the help of Google Drive or any digital storage tools so that if you lose your device, you can always retrieve your certificate, unlike when you have the manual one at home, which may get lost, burnt, or damaged. However, you can always recover it with the help of this digital innovation.

It is faster to get your digital certificate. When WAEC gave the 2024 examination results report, they announced that the digital certificate would be out in 48 hours. This is unlike before, when you had to wait several months to obtain your certificate.

This digital innovation saves you from wasting time, resources, and effort obtaining your WAEC certificate.

Now that you know the advantages of the digital WAEC certificate, let’s explore how to obtain one.

The following are the steps to take to obtain your digital WAEC certificate:

Read also: Analyzing the Role of Social Media in UTME Failure

Create an account

Go to www.waec.org and click “Create Account.”

Select “Certificate access (Candidate)” from the list of possibilities.

Enter your information, choose a password, and click “Sign up.” Your email address will receive a one-time password (OTP); copy and paste this code into the designated field.

To finalise your registration, click submit.

Enter the Exam Information

You can select the exam type and the year you took the test from the list of options; entering your birthdate is optional.

Once you have checked the “I have verified the information above” box and entered your WAEC examination number in the “candidate number field,” click “Access Certificate.”

Make Payment

To access your WAEC digital certificate, follow the preceding steps and add 7,500 to your WAEC wallet.

Select “card payment.” Then, a Flutterwave checkout page will appear. Choose your preferred method of payment: bank transfer or debit card.

After the payment has been successfully made, you will be taken back to the WAEC portal with the designated amount credited to your wallet.

After that, you must give your residential address and length of stay.

Verify Your Identity

Before allowing you to get the result, WAEC must confirm that you are the person they are interacting with.

The portal accepts the virtual NIN (16 digits), bank verification number, or international passport number as forms of identity.

We advise using the BVN method for identification verification as the quickest approach. If that doesn’t work, try one of the other two alternatives.

Download your certificate 

Following a successful identity verification process, a PDF version of your result will be displayed. It can then be downloaded to your device.