A total of 983 candidates have failed the May 2026 Bar Final (Resit) Examination, representing 50.3% of the 1,955 candidates who sat for the examination.
The Council of Legal Education (CLE) approved the results at its third-quarter hybrid meeting held on Thursday.
According to a statement issued Monday by Aderonke Osho, Secretary to the Council and Director of Administration, the results have now been formally approved.
The council said 885 candidates passed the examination, while 55 others obtained conditional passes. A total of 32 candidates were absent, while the results of 19 candidates were withheld.
The council said the overall pass rate was 45.3 percent, meaning that more than half of the candidates who sat for the resit examination failed to attain the prescribed pass mark.
The 983 candidats recorded as outright failures constitute about 50.3 percent of 1,955 candidates stated to have sat for the examination. The result represents a significant increase of candidates who failed when compared with the July 2025 Bar Final Resit examination.
About 1,675 candidates participated in the July 2025 resit, with 674 candidates, representing 40.2 per cent, recording a pass, while 608 candidates, representing approximately 36.3 per cent, failed.
Comparing the two resit examinations, the outright failure rate rose from 36.3 per cent in 2025 to 53.3 per cent in 2026—an increase of 14 percentage points. Measured proportionately, that represents about 38.6 per cent rise in the failure rate from the previous resit examination.
The number of candidates who failed also increased sharply from 608 in 2025 resit to 983 in May 2026 exercise, an additional 375 candidates. The 2026 result, however, recorded 885 direct passes, compared with 674 direct passes reported in the previous resit.
The disclosure comes the Council of Legal Education also released a list of 122 universities accredited to offer Law in Nigeria as of August 2026.
The council warned prospective law students against enrolling in unaccredited institutions, stressing that only universities approved by the regulatory body are authorised to admit students into Bachelor of Laws programmes.
It further cautioned that students enrolled in unapproved law programs would not be eligible for admission into the Nigerian Law School.
The council urged prospective students to verify the accreditation status of institutions before seeking admission to study Law in Nigeria.
