58,187 Candidates Sit For 2026 Common Entrance Examination Nationwide
By Alice Etuka, Abuja
Approximately 58,187 candidates are jostling for admission into the 104 unity schools across the nation.
Speaking to news men after monitoring the 2026 Common Entrance Examination in Abuja on Saturday, the Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad expressed satisfaction with the conduct of the examination.
Ahmad stated that the candidates were orderly, well seated and the examination started on time:
“I have looked at the registration documents of the students, I can see that they actually abide by the guidelines in terms of the ages for the examination between 10 to 12 years, so I’m happy with that and also the venues are well orderly arranged with proper invigilators, the number of invigilators are adequate, so I’m happy generally with the conduct of the examination, it’s a well organized exam”, she said.
The Minister was however worried about the high number of absentees, “we have observed that there are a number of students that are absent in the exams, in one of the hall we have about 18 students that are absent, so we’ll look at the factors resulting in that number because it’s quite a high number in one hall to have that number missing, absent from the exams”, she said.
She added that with regard to the schools the candidates were seeking admission into, the government was always working to ensure that they have proper infrastructure available for effective teaching and learning.
On his part, Registrar of the National Examinations Council (NECO), Prof. Dantani Wushishi disclosed that, “so far we have 58,187 candidates registered, lower than what we had last year which was 64,578.
Wushishi also noted that more females sat for the examination this year compared to male candidates:
“For this year too we have higher number of female candidates about 31,000 plus with male candidates just about 26,000 plus and I think this is an indication of the efforts of the ministry as far as promoting girls education is concerned, it shows that we are achieving results in that direction”, he said.
The examination centers visited were Model Secondary School, Maitama, Government Science Technical College Garki and Federal Government Boys College Apo.
Candidates were drawn from all the 36 states of Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), also from Togo and Benin Republic.
Lagos State had the highest number of candidates, 13,228 followed by FCT-Abuja with 9,639 while Taraba State had the least number of candidates, 15 followed by Togo with 23 candidates.
