Only Sokoto State, with 26.82 per cent, performed worse than Akwa Ibom.
The state’s 2026 performance also places it as the only Southern Nigerian state among the bottom 10 states.
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The nearest Southern states to Akwa Ibom were Rivers, which ranked 22nd with 56.38 per cent, and Enugu, which ranked 25th with 54.52 per cent.
PREMIUM TIMES’ analysis of the NECO data shows that Akwa Ibom was also the lowest-performing state in the South-south region, considerably behind its neighbours.
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South-east, South-south states dominate top positions
The 2026 results present a pronounced regional divide.
Abia State retained the top position nationally for the second consecutive year, with 81.78 per cent of its candidates meeting the five-credit benchmark.
Ebonyi followed with 81.03 per cent, while Delta State ranked fourth nationally with 75.17 per cent. Imo ranked eighth with 74.10 per cent, while Bayelsa came ninth with 73.92 per cent.
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This means that five states from the South-east and South-south featured among the national top nine.
Other South-south and South-east states also performed substantially better than Akwa Ibom. Edo ranked 11th with 71.18 per cent, Anambra 12th with 69.70 per cent and Cross River 18th with 62.18 per cent.
Abia’s performance is particularly notable because the state has maintained the first position in the NECO state ranking since 2024. In 2024, Abia recorded 83.40 per cent, while Akwa Ibom recorded 67.32 per cent.
Funding question
The marked decline comes despite Akwa Ibom having significant public resources available to fund education.
The newspaper’s analysis of the state’s financial records also found that detailed capital expenditure information had become unavailable in the government’s public financial documents, making it difficult to independently track how the revenue was deployed, particularly to education.
But examination fees alone do not address the teaching and learning conditions that determine students’ preparedness for external examinations.
The newspaper’s analysis also found that Akwa Ibom’s education allocation was lower as a share of the state budget than those of several southern states that performed considerably better in the 2026 NECO ranking.
Delta, which ranked fourth in NECO, allocated 11.98 per cent of its 2026 budget to education.
The figures do not, by themselves, establish that higher budgetary allocations caused the better examination results. However, they raise questions about the relationship between education priorities, spending and learning outcomes.
What happened to Akwa Ibom’s education roadmap?
PREMIUM TIMES’ review of the roadmap shows that it identified several structural weaknesses in the state’s education system, including inadequate teaching staff, a student-teacher ratio of 120:1, poorly trained teachers, teachers assigned to subjects outside their areas of specialisation, inadequate modern teaching aids, computer illiteracy among teachers, poor counselling, low teacher motivation and inadequate welfare programmes.
For the short term, the education think-tank recommended the recruitment and training of 2,000 secondary school teachers and 3,000 primary school teachers within eight months beginning from November 2020.
Its long-term objective was to reduce the student-teacher ratio to 40:1 by 2030.
However, the roadmap did not treat Akwa Ibom’s education challenge as a shortage of classrooms or teachers but identified teacher quality, deployment, training, motivation, teaching aids and welfare as interconnected problems affecting the quality of education.
The 2026 NECO result has now provided a new measure against which the implementation of those recommendations can be examined.
What also stands out is that the 2020–2024 period identified by the roadmap as its short-term implementation phase has elapsed, while the state is now in the second half of the 2020–2030 roadmap period.
Government keeps mum
PREMIUM TIMES contacted the Commissioner for Education, Ubong Umoh, seeking the government’s explanation for the state’s performance.
The newspaper asked the commissioner to explain the factors responsible for the result, whether the ministry had identified learning or examination-preparedness challenges before the examination, and whether it had begun an assessment of the apparent decline.
The ministry was also asked whether shortages of teachers, particularly in English Language and Mathematics, contributed to the outcome; how much the government had spent on teacher recruitment and training, instructional materials and school infrastructure; and what interventions would be introduced ahead of the 2027 examinations.
Mr Umoh did not respond to calls and the media enquiry as of the time of filing this report.
The silence leaves unanswered questions about whether the drastic decline is an isolated examination-year problem or a deeper deterioration in the state’s secondary education system.
Yet, the difference between the 2025 and 2026 results is particularly stark: from 67.08 per cent and 12th position nationally to 37.42 per cent and 36th position in one year. The result now places renewed focus on whether the state’s education policies, teacher interventions and budgetary priorities are translating into measurable improvements in classroom learning.
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