The paper examined the public examinations in Nigeria: challenges and prospects in the 21st century with special focus on the causes, consequences and solutions. The paper traced the origin and development of public examinations to the colonial era where examinations and syllabuses were British oriented. Infrastructural inadequacy, population explosion, examination malpractice, poor funding among others were identified as major challenges facing public examinations in Nigeria. However, the paper identified emphasis on paper qualification, dearth of learning resources, laissez-faire attitude to work, favouritism and godfatherism to mention, but a few as causes of the problems faced by public examinations in Nigeria. Poor performance among students, reduction of our certificates to mere weightless papers especially in the sight of foreigners, due to examination malpractice is some the consequences faced as a result of the problems. The paper concludes that, a proper re-orientation as regards the virtue of integrity as an entity is all that is needed to confront this myriad of challenges faced by public examinations in Nigeria.