LAGOS – The West African Examinations Council (WAEC), on Wednesday, in Lagos, announced that 1,200,514 candidates, representing 61.54 percent of those who sat this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for school candidates, obtained credits and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
Announcing the release of the 2026 WASSCE results at a press briefing held at the council’s national office in Yaba, the Head of the National Office (HNO), Dr. Amos Josiah Dangut, said the figure represented a 1.42 percent decline compared to the 2025 diet.
Dr. Dangut, who described the briefing as his third and last as Head of the Council, said a breakdown of the 1,200,514 candidates who met the five-credit benchmark showed that 558,883, representing 28.65 percent, were males, while 641,631, representing 32.89 percent, were females.
He further disclosed that when the five-subject requirement was considered without the mandatory inclusion of English Language and Mathematics, a higher number of 1,687,378 candidates, representing 86.50 percent of those who sat the examination, obtained credits and above.
According to Dangut, a total of 1,959,668 candidates from 24,207 schools registered for the examination nationwide, out of which 1,950,726 candidates, comprising 953,459 males and 997,267 females, actually sat the papers.
“The examination was also written by candidates in some schools in Benin Republic, Cote d’Ivoire and Equatorial Guinea, where the Nigerian secondary school curriculum is in use.”
On the withholding of results, Dr. Dangut said candidates sponsored by states indebted to the council would not have their results released until outstanding payments are settled.
He appealed to the affected state governments and sponsors to urgently offset their debts to enable the affected schools and candidates gain access to their results.
The WAEC boss also announced that the results of 167,486 candidates, representing 8.59 percent of the total number that sat the examination, were being withheld over various cases of examination malpractice, a figure he said was 1.11 percentage points lower than the 9.7 percent recorded in 2025.
He attributed some of the malpractice cases to the increasing use of cell phones in examination halls despite an existing ban, as well as organised cheating in some schools.
He said candidates affected by such decisions could seek redress through the council’s online complaints portal, https://waecinternational. org/complaints.
On the overall processing of results, Dr. Dangut said 1,834,695 candidates, representing 94.05 percent, had their results fully processed and released, while 116,031 candidates, representing 5.95 percent, had one or more subjects still being processed due to unresolved issues assuring that efforts were underway to complete the process within a few days.
The WAEC helmsman also disclosed that 1,213 candidates with special needs registered for the examination, comprising 137 visually challenged, 491 with impaired hearing, 55 who were spastic or mentally challenged, and 41 who were physically challenged, adding that all had been adequately catered for and their results released alongside those of other candidates.
Dr. Dangut listed some of the challenges encountered during the conduct of the examination to include logistics issues that delayed a major paper, non-adherence to registration deadlines by some schools, rising costs occasioned by inflation, and the activities of rogue website operators peddling fake examination papers.
He said the council, working with security operatives, had apprehended some of the culprits, alongside some supervisors and invigilators caught aiding malpractice, who would be sanctioned through the Nigeria Examinations Committee (NEC) and the various state ministries of education.
He said candidates could check their results on the council’s portal, www.waecdirect. org, within twelve hours, while the coordination and marking exercise had held across 88 centres nationwide between July 2 and July 20, 2026, involving 102,708 examiners
