More than 70 percent of the candidates who sat for the 2014 November/ December 2014 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), failed to make five credits, Mathematics and English Language inclusive, the exams body announced Thursday.
Scoring five credits with the two subjects is regarded as the pass mark for the exams.
The Head, National Office of the Council, Charles Eguridu, who announced the results Thursday at a news conference in Lagos, said of the total 241,161 candidate who sat for the examinations in 2014, only 72,522 scored five credits with the two key subjects, giving a pass rate of 29.27 percent.
In 2013, out of 298,971 candidates who sat for the exams, a total of 86,612 candidates, representing, 29.17 percent obtained credits in 5 subjects and above including English Language and Mathematics.
The 2014 performance improved dismally upon the 2013 record, at less than one percent.
The examination body said it withheld 28,817 results.
According to Mr. Eguridu, the results were not released because they were connected to examination malpractice.
He said such cases were already being investigated and that the reports of the investigations would be presented to the Nigeria Examination Committee (NEC) of the council for consideration.
Mr. Eguridu said the committee’s decision would be communicated to the affected candidates in due course.
Giving a further breakdown of the results of candidates, he said 132,521 male and 114,332 female candidates sat for the examination.
He noted that of the figure, a total of 241,161 candidates representing 97.69 per cent had their results fully released, while 5,691 others, representing 2.31 per cent had a few of their subjects still being processed, due to some errors.
Mr. Eguridu said that the errors were mainly traceable to the candidates and cyber cafés in the course of registration or writing the examination.
He explained that the errors were already being corrected by the council, to enable the affected candidates get their results.
Mr. Eguridu said that a total of 75,313 candidates, obtained six credits and above, while 110,346 others obtained five credits and above.
According to him, 145,036 candidates representing 58.75 percent obtained credits and above in four subjects, while 177,177 others representing 71.77 percent obtained credits and above in three subjects.
He said that a total of 205,090 candidates obtained credits and above in two subjects.
He said that a total of 48 blind candidates registered and sat for the examination, with four of them obtaining credits in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
