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The NECO has invited the management of 40 secondary schools across 17 states over their alleged involvement in mass cheating during the 2024 SSCE. Disclosing this, the Registrar of NECO, Professor Dantani Wushishi, announced the official release of the 2024 SSCE results at a news conference in Minna, the Niger State capital, on Thursday, September 19.
In his words, the council said it was astonished to find out that 8,437 candidates were implicated in various forms of examination malpractices during this year’s SSCE, representing a significant fall from the 12,030 cases recorded in 2023, showing a 30.1 percent decrease. He said the commitment of the council will be to ensure such misdeed are handled and then the integrity of the examination process is protected.
It also announced that all the schools involved in the cheating would be invited by NECO for thorough discussions, after which proper sanctions would be applied where needed. Professor Wushishi stopped short of stating what sanctions were to be meted out, but he reassured that the council would go all out to ensure this menace did not repeat itself in subsequent examinations.
This, among others, is because one school in Ekiti State has been recommended for de-registration due to involvement in mass cheating in two core subjects. This drastic measure is to ensure NECO continues to maintain the credibility of its examinations and will hold schools responsible for actions carried out by their students.
Apart from the schools, the council also established that 21 supervisors across 12 states had been found to have failed in their supervisory duties. These variously include several acts of negligence such as poor supervision, aiding and abetting malpractice, abscondment during the conduct of the exam, extortion, drunkenness, and general misconduct. NECO has recommended that these supervisors be blacklisted from participating in future examination processes.
Wushishi explained that NECO was still committed to the standard of education and ensuring that candidates get their due results in relation to their merits. Concerned about the roles, which some schools and supervisors have played, contributing in one way or the other to the malpractices, he assured that NECO would continue to strengthen its monitoring and enforcement mechanisms to avert such cases in the future.
The report was corroborated by the Nigerian Tribune and The New Telegraph, which ran publications on Friday, 20th September, to show the level of cheating and proactive steps taken by NECO to address the issue.
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