Cameroon’s Minister of Secondary Education, Nalova Lyonga, sanctioned 208 candidates and 47 teachers for irregularities committed during examinations administered by the Cameroon Baccalaureate Office.

A series of decisions signed on Nov. 25, 2025, and reviewed by SBBC, brought the total number of sanctioned individuals to 255.

The measures mainly concerned the general secondary baccalaureate, the general secondary probatoire, the industrial technical probatoire, and the industrial technician certificate.

For candidates, authorities imposed sanctions ranging from annulment of the 2025 session to multi-year suspensions extending through 2028, depending on the severity of the offenses.

The ministry cited concealed prohibited materials hidden in clothing, shoes or belts.

The decisions also cited participation in digital fraud networks, including WhatsApp groups used to receive and share exam papers.

Authorities further identified fraudulent registrations using falsified report cards and illegal enrollments enabled by internal complicity to allow ineligible candidates to sit exams.

For teachers, the ministry applied a uniform and exceptional sanction to all 47 individuals. The decisions withdrew their accreditation for the 2026, 2027 and 2028 sessions.

As a result, the teachers face exclusion from exam organization, supervision, grading and administrative management for all OBC examinations during that period.

While the measures remain administrative, they extend accountability across the full examination chain.

Reliability of Official Exams

Several secretariat heads and jury members also received formal observation letters.

Authorities cited anonymity errors, including code mismatches on physical education exam scripts at the Etoug-Ebé bilingual high school in Yaoundé.

The ministry also cited material negligence, such as failure to remove script headers and transmission of empty envelopes containing grade reports.

At the Sodiko bilingual high school in Douala, staff mistakenly handed an A4 series exam paper to a candidate registered in series C due to a secretariat failure.

Authorities did not classify these incidents as fraud, but they deemed them serious enough to disrupt grading and compromise result confidentiality.

The incidents occurred amid recurring criticism of exam reliability, fueled by viral claims of leaked papers on social media.

In November, Nalova Lyonga addressed the National Assembly and acknowledged the scale of the issue while defending the overall validity of the diplomas.

“Social networks widely disseminated many cases of leaked OBC and GCE Board exam papers. However, after investigations ordered by the Prime Minister, the bodies responsible for organizing these exams showed that these leaks did not call into question the credibility of the official examinations of the 2025 session and the diplomas awarded,” she said.

She added that “both institutions received instructions to take measures to strengthen exam security against cybercrime threats.”

Official ministry data showed the overall pass rate for OBC exams edged down to 46.53% in 2025 from 46.94% in 2024. Within that trend, the general education baccalaureate recorded a sharp improvement.

The pass rate for the general baccalaureate rose to 47.35% in 2025 from 37.29% in 2024, marking a gain of 10.06 percentage points.

Beyond the figures, the sanctions aim to send a signal of firmness and shift policy toward prevention rather than correction to preserve the value of Cameroonian diplomas, whose recognition depends on procedural rigor and institutional trust.

Source: Business in Cameroon