20 Years After: NECO Refunds N2b Operational Surplus To Fed. Govt, 30 More Heads To Roll Over Fake Certificates – Gana
By Usman Muhammad & Peter Idowu Jiwa, Minna
Twenty years after it’s establishment, National Examinations Council (NECO), under the stewardship of Acting Registrar, Alhaji Abubakar Gana, has refunded about two billion naira operational surplus to the Federal Government.
The Acting Registrar who disclosed this in an exclusive interview with Education Monitor in Minna, recently, said last year, (2018), the Council refunded about N1.2b and N1b this year (2019).
Gana also revealed that after recent dismissal of 70 staff of the Council for involvement in fake certificate scandal, not less than 30 more staff have been penciled down for dismissal in the ongoing staff certificate verification exercise for the same offence.
Gana who is the first pioneer staff that rose to the rank of Registrar by dint of hard work, since the establishment of the first indigenous examinations body, said as someone who has seen it all in the Council, he is determined to sanitize the examinations body and to set a standard that anyone that will eventually be appointed as substantive Registrar, after the expiration of his acting period, can successfully build on from where he is going to stop.
Alhaji Gana who emphasized that with federal government’s support, the council has the human capacity and technical know-how to conduct examinations for the entire African region and to generate huge resources for itself and for the government which is in need of resources to run the country.
Gana revealed that NECO today organizes examinations for some African countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Togo, Benin Republic, Gabon etc because of its capacity and unparalleled standard that it has set in the conduct of professional examinations.
The Acting Registrar who stressed that NECO is the only examinations body in Nigeria today that is statutorily mandated to conduct Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE), for all Federal government colleges and state government Junior secondary schools, however regretted that almost all state governments have refused to cooperate with the Council for the conduct of the examinations.