36-Week WAEC Revision Programme — Economics
September to the May WAEC sitting. SS3 is not a year of new material so much as a year of pressure on material already met, so this is not a course to work through from the beginning — it is a testing programme. Each week you answer cold, work the ones you got wrong, and have the AI explain why you got them wrong. Anything you turn out never to have been taught, you learn there and then, and meet again three weeks later.
A week is one block of the syllabus and the prompts that cover it. You are not meant to do all of them: answer the questions first, and let what you get wrong decide which of the rest you need. Fifteen or twenty minutes a subject is a real week's work — nine subjects do not fit any other way.
Every week, in this order
Start with the questions, not the explanation. The first two steps are in every week; a purpose-written mistake or pitfalls prompt appears in about half of them, and where it does not, your own wrong answers are the material for step three.
- 1. Retrieve — Answer cold, with nothing in front of you. Wrong answers are the point — they show you where the week's work is.
- 2. Drill — Work the ones you missed properly, showing every step, so you and the AI can both see where it went wrong.
- 3. Explain my error — Ask why your answer was wrong, not just what the right one is. Where the week offers a Spot My Mistake or WAEC Pitfalls prompt, use it.
- 4. Teach me — Only if the error turns out to be something you were never taught. Then come back and retrieve it again.
Basic Economic Concepts
↑ Jump to week- Week 1
- Quiz: The difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics
- Quiz: Labour, and what determines its efficiency
- WAEC prep: Economics as a social science, and what its subject matter covers
- WAEC prep: The entrepreneur and the functions they perform
- Practice set: The reward paid to each factor: rent, wages, interest and profit
- Spot my mistake: Confusing economics with commerce and with accounting
- Spot my mistake: Treating capital as money rather than as a produced means of production
- Let me explain: Wants, needs and the scale of preference
- Let me explain: Capital, and the difference between fixed and working capital
- Teach me: Scarcity, choice and the fundamental economic problem
- Teach me: Land as a factor of production and what makes it peculiar
- Week 2
- Quiz: The socialist economy and its defining features
- Quiz: Mean, median and mode applied to economic data
- WAEC prep: How each system answers what to produce, how, and for whom
- WAEC prep: Percentages, ratios and index numbers
- Practice set: Measures of dispersion: range, variance and standard deviation
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a mixed economy is simply capitalism with higher taxes
- Spot my mistake: Reading an index number as a percentage change from the previous year
- Let me explain: The mixed economy, and why most countries actually run one
- Let me explain: Reading and interpreting graphs of economic relationships
- Teach me: The capitalist economy and its defining features
- Teach me: Presenting economic data in tables and charts
- Week 3
- Quiz: The determinants of demand other than price
- WAEC prep: Abnormal demand curves and the Giffen paradox
- Practice set: Joint, competitive, derived and composite demand
- Spot my mistake: Calling a change in price a shift of the demand curve
- Let me explain: A movement along a demand curve against a shift of the whole curve
- Teach me: The law of demand and why the demand curve slopes downward
Demand, Supply and Price
↑ Jump to week- Week 4
- Quiz: The determinants of supply other than price
- WAEC prep: Abnormal supply curves, including the backward-bending supply of labour
- Practice set: Joint supply and competitive supply
- Spot my mistake: Treating a rise in the cost of production as a movement along the supply curve
- Let me explain: A movement along a supply curve against a shift of the curve
- Teach me: The law of supply and why the supply curve slopes upward
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 5
- Quiz: The law of diminishing marginal utility
- Quiz: The effect of a shift in demand on equilibrium price and quantity
- WAEC prep: Indifference curves and the budget line
- WAEC prep: Excess demand and excess supply, and how a market clears them
- Practice set: The price mechanism and its role in allocating scarce resources
- Spot my mistake: Consumer surplus and how it is measured on a diagram
- Spot my mistake: Assuming equilibrium price must rise whenever demand and supply both increase
- Let me explain: Consumer equilibrium and the equi-marginal principle
- Let me explain: The effect of a shift in supply on equilibrium price and quantity
- Teach me: Total utility and marginal utility
- Teach me: How equilibrium price is fixed by demand and supply together
Revisit from three weeks ago
Production, Costs and Market Structures
↑ Jump to week- Week 6
- Quiz: Fixed and variable factors, and the short run against the long run
- WAEC prep: The law of diminishing returns
- Practice set: The three stages of production and which one a rational firm chooses
- Spot my mistake: Confusing the law of diminishing returns with the economies of scale
- Let me explain: Total product, average product and marginal product
- Teach me: The meaning of production and the four types it takes
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 7
- Quiz: Average cost and marginal cost, and how the two relate
- Quiz: Monopoly, and the sources of monopoly power
- WAEC prep: The profit-maximising output where marginal cost equals marginal revenue
- WAEC prep: Oligopoly and the interdependence between firms
- Practice set: Price and output determination under perfect competition and under monopoly
- Spot my mistake: Confusing accounting profit with economic profit
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a monopolist can fix price and quantity independently of each other
- Let me explain: Total revenue, average revenue and marginal revenue
- Let me explain: Monopolistic competition and product differentiation
- Teach me: Fixed cost, variable cost and total cost
- Teach me: Perfect competition and the assumptions it rests on
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 8
- Quiz: Partnership, and the liability partners carry
- WAEC prep: Co-operative societies and public corporations
- Practice set: Comparing the sources of capital open to each type of business
- Spot my mistake: Reading limited liability as a limit on what the company itself owes
- Let me explain: The limited liability company and the separation of ownership from control
- Teach me: The sole proprietorship and its features
Revisit from three weeks ago
Business Organisation and Distribution
↑ Jump to week- Week 9
- Quiz: The functions performed by a wholesaler
- WAEC prep: The case for and against eliminating the middleman
- Practice set: The problems of goods distribution in Nigeria
- Spot my mistake: Assuming that removing the middleman always lowers the price the consumer pays
- Let me explain: The functions of a retailer and the types of retail outlet
- Teach me: The channels through which goods travel to the final consumer
Revisit from three weeks ago
Population, Agriculture and Industry
↑ Jump to week- Week 10
- Quiz: Birth rate, death rate and the rate of natural increase
- WAEC prep: Over-population, under-population and optimum population
- Practice set: The labour force, and what determines its size
- Spot my mistake: Taking over-population to mean simply a large population
- Let me explain: The age and sex structure of a population, and the dependency ratio
- Teach me: The census and the ways a population is counted
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 11
- Quiz: Subsistence and commercial agriculture compared
- Quiz: The factors that determine where an industry is located
- WAEC prep: Agricultural marketing and the role of marketing boards
- WAEC prep: The benefits industrialisation brings to a developing economy
- Practice set: The obstacles to industrialisation in West Africa
- Spot my mistake: The effect of land tenure systems on agricultural output
- Spot my mistake: Treating import substitution and export promotion as the same policy
- Let me explain: The systems of agriculture practised across West Africa
- Let me explain: Import substitution set against export promotion
- Teach me: The contribution agriculture makes to the West African economy
- Teach me: What industrialisation means and why states pursue it
Revisit from three weeks ago
National Income, Money and Banking
↑ Jump to week- Week 12
- Quiz: The income, output and expenditure approaches to measurement
- WAEC prep: The uses of national income statistics, and their limitations
- Practice set: Real against nominal national income, and income per head
- Spot my mistake: Comparing national income across years without adjusting for inflation
- Let me explain: The difficulties of measuring national income in West Africa
- Teach me: GDP, GNP and net national income
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 13
- Quiz: The types of money and what makes up the money supply
- WAEC prep: The effects of inflation on different groups in society
- Practice set: Deflation, disinflation, and the measures used to control inflation
- Spot my mistake: Treating deflation and disinflation as the same thing
- Let me explain: Demand-pull inflation set against cost-push inflation
- Teach me: The functions of money and the qualities good money must have
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 14
- Quiz: How commercial banks create credit
- Quiz: Capital expenditure against recurrent expenditure
- WAEC prep: The Nigerian Stock Exchange and its functions
- WAEC prep: The incidence of taxation, and who really bears a tax
- Practice set: Fiscal policy and how government uses it to steer the economy
- Spot my mistake: Non-bank financial institutions and the work they do
- Spot my mistake: Assuming all government revenue comes from taxation
- Let me explain: The money market and the capital market compared
- Let me explain: The principles and canons of taxation
- Teach me: Commercial banks and the services they provide
- Teach me: The sources from which government draws revenue
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 15
- Quiz: The indicators used to measure development
- WAEC prep: The problems of development planning in West Africa
- Practice set: The characteristics of a developing economy
- Spot my mistake: Using a rise in GDP on its own as proof that development has taken place
- Let me explain: The objectives of development planning
- Teach me: Economic growth and economic development distinguished
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 16
- Quiz: Absolute cost advantage and comparative cost advantage
- WAEC prep: The balance of trade set against the balance of payments
- Practice set: Visible and invisible items in the current account
- Spot my mistake: Confusing the balance of trade with the balance of payments
- Let me explain: The terms of trade, and what causes them to move
- Teach me: The basis on which international trade takes place
Revisit from three weeks ago
International Economics
↑ Jump to week- Week 17
- Quiz: Free trade area, customs union and common market compared
- Quiz: The World Bank and the kind of lending it does
- WAEC prep: The benefits member states expect from integration
- WAEC prep: UNCTAD and the concerns of developing countries
- Practice set: The African Development Bank and how it operates
- Spot my mistake: The obstacles that frustrate integration schemes in practice
- Spot my mistake: Treating the IMF and the World Bank as two names for the same institution
- Let me explain: Trade creation and trade diversion
- Let me explain: The World Trade Organisation and its role in trade rules
- Teach me: What economic integration means and the forms it takes
- Teach me: The aims and functions of the International Monetary Fund
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 18
- Quiz: The solid minerals found in West Africa and their uses
- WAEC prep: The problems of over-dependence on a single resource
- Practice set: Conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a country rich in natural resources must therefore be a developed one
- Let me explain: The main cash crops and the countries that produce them
- Teach me: Petroleum and its place in the Nigerian economy
Revisit from three weeks ago
Price Theory and Resource Allocation
↑ Jump to week- Week 19
- Quiz: Reading a production possibility curve
- WAEC prep: Points inside, on and outside the curve, and what each signifies
- Practice set: How an outward shift of the whole curve represents economic growth
- Spot my mistake: Reading a point inside the production possibility curve as impossible rather than inefficient
- Let me explain: Why the production possibility curve is concave to the origin
- Teach me: Opportunity cost, and why every choice carries one
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 20
- Quiz: Secondary production and the processing of raw materials
- Quiz: Occupational mobility of labour
- WAEC prep: The relationship between the three levels of production
- WAEC prep: The mobility of land, capital and the entrepreneur compared
- Practice set: How the mobility of a factor affects what it earns
- Spot my mistake: The claim that tertiary production is unproductive
- Spot my mistake: Confusing the geographical mobility of labour with its occupational mobility
- Let me explain: Tertiary production and the services it supplies
- Let me explain: The barriers that restrict labour from moving
- Teach me: Primary production and the activities it covers
- Teach me: Geographical mobility of labour
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 21
- Quiz: How a centrally planned economy allocates its resources
- WAEC prep: The case for and against central planning
- Practice set: Which system serves consumer choice better, and why
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a centrally planned economy has no prices at all
- Let me explain: The role the price mechanism plays in each system
- Teach me: How a free enterprise economy allocates its resources
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 22
- Quiz: Elastic, inelastic and unitary demand
- WAEC prep: Income elasticity and cross elasticity of demand
- Practice set: Applying elasticity to decisions about taxation and pricing
- Spot my mistake: Reading the steepness of a demand curve as its elasticity
- Let me explain: The determinants of price elasticity of demand
- Teach me: Price elasticity of demand and how it is calculated
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 23
- Quiz: Elastic and inelastic supply distinguished
- Quiz: The effect of simultaneous shifts in demand and supply
- WAEC prep: The effect of time on the elasticity of supply
- WAEC prep: The effect of a subsidy on equilibrium price and quantity
- Practice set: The effect of an indirect tax on equilibrium
- Spot my mistake: Reading elasticity from the slope of a supply curve
- Spot my mistake: Assuming an indirect tax is borne entirely by the consumer
- Let me explain: The determinants of elasticity of supply
- Let me explain: Disequilibrium, and the forces that push a market back to balance
- Teach me: Price elasticity of supply and how it is calculated
- Teach me: How a free market reaches equilibrium
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 24
- Quiz: The consequences of a price ceiling, including black markets
- WAEC prep: Buffer stock schemes and price stabilisation
- Practice set: Rationing as a companion measure to price control
- Spot my mistake: Setting a maximum price above the equilibrium price and expecting it to bite
- Let me explain: Minimum price legislation and the minimum wage
- Teach me: Maximum price legislation and why governments impose it
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 25
- Quiz: External economies of scale
- Quiz: The relationship between the marginal cost and average cost curves
- WAEC prep: The optimum firm and the optimum size of a plant
- WAEC prep: The break-even point and the shut-down point
- Practice set: Drawing and interpreting revenue curves under monopoly
- Spot my mistake: Confusing economies of scale with an ordinary fall in variable cost
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a firm should shut down as soon as it begins to make a loss
- Let me explain: Internal and external diseconomies of scale
- Let me explain: Short-run and long-run average cost curves
- Teach me: Internal economies of scale
- Teach me: The average cost curve and why it takes a U shape
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 26
- Quiz: The sources of finance open to a partnership
- WAEC prep: Retained earnings and bank borrowing compared
- Practice set: Choosing an appropriate source of funds for a given business
- Spot my mistake: Treating a debenture holder as an owner of the company
- Let me explain: Shares and debentures as sources of company finance
- Teach me: Raising capital in a sole proprietorship
Revisit from three weeks ago
Enterprise, Labour and Output
↑ Jump to week- Week 27
- Quiz: Commercialisation, and how it differs from privatisation
- Quiz: The effects of migration on the rural areas left behind
- WAEC prep: The effects of privatisation on employment and on prices
- WAEC prep: Population density and distribution across Nigeria
- Practice set: Policies for slowing the rural-urban drift
- Spot my mistake: The assumption that privatisation always improves efficiency
- Spot my mistake: Treating population density as the same thing as population size
- Let me explain: Nationalisation and the reasons governments take firms over
- Let me explain: The effects of migration on the receiving urban areas
- Teach me: Privatisation and the arguments used to justify it
- Teach me: The push and pull factors behind rural-urban migration
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 28
- Quiz: Underemployment and disguised unemployment
- WAEC prep: The functions of trade unions
- Practice set: Collective bargaining and the methods unions use
- Spot my mistake: Counting everyone without paid work as unemployed
- Let me explain: The causes and effects of unemployment in Nigeria
- Teach me: The types of unemployment
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 29
- Quiz: The finance and credit problems facing farmers
- Quiz: The advantages small-scale industry offers a developing economy
- WAEC prep: Government programmes aimed at improving agriculture
- WAEC prep: The problems small-scale industries face in Nigeria
- Practice set: Government support schemes for small-scale industry
- Spot my mistake: The claim that mechanisation alone would solve the problem
- Spot my mistake: Assuming large-scale production is always cheaper for each unit produced
- Let me explain: Storage, processing and transport problems
- Let me explain: Large-scale industry and the conditions it requires
- Teach me: Land tenure problems in Nigerian agriculture
- Teach me: The features of small-scale industry
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 30
- Quiz: The income approach and the avoidance of double counting
- WAEC prep: Transfer payments, and why they are excluded
- Practice set: Working out national income from a set of given data
- Spot my mistake: Including transfer payments when working out national income
- Let me explain: The expenditure approach
- Teach me: The output or product approach
Revisit from three weeks ago
Money, Public Finance and Trade
↑ Jump to week- Week 31
- Quiz: Cost-push inflation and what causes it
- Quiz: The central bank as lender of last resort
- WAEC prep: The effects of inflation on savers, borrowers and fixed-income earners
- Practice set: The monetary and fiscal measures used to control inflation
- WAEC prep: The instruments of monetary policy
- Spot my mistake: Treating a rise in the price of one good as inflation
- Spot my mistake: Confusing the central bank's role with that of a commercial bank
- Let me explain: Imported inflation and structural inflation
- Let me explain: The issue of currency and the management of external reserves
- Teach me: Demand-pull inflation and what causes it
- Teach me: The central bank as banker to the government
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 32
- Quiz: Indirect taxes, including VAT and customs duties
- WAEC prep: The merits and demerits of direct against indirect taxes
- Practice set: The effects of taxation on production and on distribution
- Spot my mistake: Calling a tax progressive because the amount paid rises with income
- Let me explain: Progressive, proportional and regressive taxation
- Teach me: Direct taxes and the forms they take
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 33
- Quiz: Surplus and deficit budgets, and when each is used
- WAEC prep: Debt servicing and the burden of the national debt
- Practice set: Debt relief and strategies for managing debt
- Spot my mistake: Treating a budget deficit and the national debt as the same figure
- Let me explain: Internal debt and external debt
- Teach me: The budget, and what a balanced budget means
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 34
- Quiz: The current account and the capital account
- Quiz: Quotas, embargoes and other non-tariff barriers
- WAEC prep: The measures used to correct a deficit
- Practice set: Devaluation and its effect on the balance of payments
- WAEC prep: The arguments against protection and in favour of free trade
- Spot my mistake: Assuming devaluation improves the balance of payments immediately
- Spot my mistake: The infant industry argument and the limits of it
- Let me explain: The causes of balance of payments disequilibrium
- Let me explain: The arguments advanced in favour of protection
- Teach me: The structure of the balance of payments accounts
- Teach me: Tariffs and the purposes they are meant to serve
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 35
- Quiz: The institutions through which ECOWAS works
- WAEC prep: The problems limiting integration within ECOWAS
- Practice set: The ECOWAS protocol on the free movement of persons
- Spot my mistake: Reading ECOWAS membership as an automatic right to work in any member state
- Let me explain: The achievements of ECOWAS in trade and in free movement
- Teach me: The formation and objectives of ECOWAS
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 36
- Quiz: The benefits Nigeria derives from OPEC membership
- Quiz: Price discrimination under monopoly and when it is possible
- WAEC prep: World Bank project lending in West Africa
- Practice set: The criticisms levelled at the IMF and the World Bank
- WAEC prep: Comparing the four market structures on price, output and entry
- Spot my mistake: Assuming OPEC fixes the world price of crude oil directly
- Spot my mistake: Assuming price discrimination means charging different prices for different products
- Let me explain: IMF conditionalities and the effects they have
- Let me explain: The kinked demand curve in oligopoly
- Teach me: OPEC, its objectives, and how it sets production quotas
- Teach me: Duopoly and the interdependence of two sellers
Revisit from three weeks ago