Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, has asked students writing the ongoing 2025 Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE) by the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) to avoid using short cuts but work hard to excel in life.

The Minister stated this while inspecting one of the schools where the CBT is being test-run in Abuja, on Wednesday.

He said the processes put in place by WAEC to commence the Computer Based Test (CBT) for the ongoing examination is extremely difficult for anyone to hack.

He said the system of writing examinations with paper and pen is plagued with all forms of malpractices, which CBT will help to eliminate.

"Please continue to work hard, study hard and as you do this, the resultant effect of this is that whatever exam you do, you will pass.

"And as you navigate your life journey, you will excel. Don't take the short cut, anyone that takes the short cut, they're bound to fail. Challenge yourself, be disciplined, and be a patriotic citizen."

Adding that the earliest they adopted CBT, the better for the students and officials, he said, "We have clear evidence that when exams are done, using technology, we're able to minimize the level of fraud to almost zero.

"WAEC has shown that we can do CBT and it's easy. I went to their control room, at the internal control, the processes they put in place and what WEAC is doing now, it's going to be extremely difficult and actually impossible for anybody to hack into the system because they're working via the local area network. It's not connected to the cloud. So it's literally impossible for anybody to hack into the system.

"They've gotten it right. So fully, in November, all the November exams Objectives will be CBT. By the time we get to 2026, Essays and Objectives will be CBT for WAEC and NECO.

"I went around, monitored all the screens of each of those students, they were doing objective questions in English, it was very seamless."

In terms of providing the needed infrastructure for schools to comfortably migrate to CBT, Alausa said the government will be challenges to provide infrastructure.

"Are we going to be ready to provide every single needed infrastructure by November? Absolutely not, but as we move into the future, we will be ready, yes; we have to challenge ourselves as a government. The government and the governed and that's what we're doing. We can't continue to do the same thing and expect a different result," he said.

"We cannot be using things that it's so archaic. This is the way we've been doing an exam for 300 years, the world is changing on us, we have to adopt technology. And that's what we're doing and we will do this. It's easy, it's possible. This is not breaking down the mountain. This is not breaking down the entire universe. This is what is being done, best practices in other countries, Why should we be different? We got innovators, Nigerians are excelling everywhere in the world. We've got to get ourselves to high standards."