Why NECO withheld results of candidates from Kano public schools

 

The National Examination Council (NECO) last Wednesday released its June/July senior secondary examination results. About 71% of candidates who sat for the exams nationwide scored five credits and above in subjects including Mathematics and English.

In Kano, the fate of up to 70,000 candidates who wrote the exams hangs in the balance as the exam body refused to release their results due to a backlog of over N600m debt reportedly owed the exam body by the state government, according to a Guardian report.

Candidates in Kano who were enrolled by the government have been unable to access the results whereas candidates who were privately enrolled have been able to check theirs.

Several states in Nigeria pay examination fees (either WAEC or NECO, or both in some states) for final year students in state owned secondary schools.

Withholding of results by the examination bodies due to owed debts by states is not new in Nigeria as can be seen here (Niger state, NECO 2014), here (Several states, NECO 2015), here (Ondo, WAEC 2017), here (13 states, WAEC 2015), and the list goes on.