Posted by Chinenye on Wed 05th Aug, 2026 - tori.ng
WAEC has withheld thousands of 2026 WASSCE results over alleged examination malpractice as it released this year's performance statistics.
(WAEC. Photo by Vanguard News)
The West African Examinations Council has withheld examination results for 167,486 candidates 8.59 per cent of those who sat the 2026 Computer-Based West African Senior School Certificate Examination for school candidates citing alleged malpractice.
This represents an improvement from the 9.7 per cent withheld in 2025, according to an announcement made on Wednesday by the Head of WAEC's Nigeria National Office during a briefing in Lagos.
The council attributed the result suspensions to multiple breaches, chief among them the continued use of mobile phones within examination venues despite existing prohibitions and coordinated cheating incidents across certain institutions.
Supervisory and examination oversight personnel implicated in facilitating candidate malpractice have been detained and will undergo disciplinary sanctions through state education authorities.
Registration for the examination encompassed 1,959,668 candidates across 24,207 schools spanning Nigeria, Benin Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, and Equatorial Guinea, though 1,950,726 ultimately participated.
Performance metrics revealed that 1,200,514 candidates (61.54 per cent) achieved credits and above across at least five subjects, inclusive of English Language and Mathematics.
An expanded measure showed 1,687,378 candidates (86.50 per cent) secured credits and above in five or more subjects regardless of language and mathematics inclusion.
This narrower success metric fell by 1.42 percentage points relative to 2025 outcomes.
Among the 1.2 million candidates reaching the stringent benchmark, 558,883 (28.65 per cent) were male and 641,631 (32.89 per cent) were female.
The gender distribution across all examination participants was 997,267 females (51.12 per cent) and 953,459 males (48.88 per cent).
Results processing has been substantially completed, with 1,834,695 candidates (94.05 per cent) receiving full release and 116,031 candidates (5.95 per cent) still undergoing finalisation.
The examination accommodated 1,213 candidates with disabilities: 137 visually impaired, 491 with hearing impairment, 55 with spastic and mental challenges, and 41 with physical impairments.
The 2026 sitting constituted the second iteration of the Computer-Based WASSCE for School Candidates format.
Technological enhancements implemented included a Digital Examiner Mark System to accelerate results processing, question paper serialisation to prevent irregularities, and a direct e-PIN generation portal for candidate result access.
Conducted between April 24 and June 19, 2026, the examination engaged 102,708 examiners across 88 marking centres.
The Head of WAEC's Nigeria office, noting this as his final public engagement in that role, indicated that candidates sponsored by states with outstanding financial obligations to the council would be withheld results until arrears were discharged.