Photo: The Law School
By: Mandy Park
Candidates totaling 983 failed the May 2026 bar final (resit) examination, representing 50.3 percent of the 1,955 candidates who sat for the examination.
This was contained in a statement issued on Monday by Aderonke Osho, Secretary to the Council and Director of Administration, where she said the Council of Legal Education (CLE) approved the results at its third quarter hybrid meeting held on Thursday.
According to the statement: “A total of 1,955 candidates sat for the examination. The results are summarised as follows: Pass: 885 candidates. Conditional Pass: 55 candidates. Fail: 983 candidates, Absent: 32 candidates. Withheld: 19 candidates”.
The Council said the examination recorded an overall pass rate of 45.3 percent, while 54.7 percent of the candidates did not attain the prescribed pass mark.
The failure rate in the 2026 resit is higher than the 36.3 percent recorded in the 2025 bar final resit examination, when 608 out of 1,675 candidates who sat for the examination failed.
This indicates that the 2026 resit recorded a 38.6 percent increase in the failure rate compared with the previous year’s resit.
