Chidimma UCHEGBU
The Federal Government has directed heads of tertiary education institutions to deploy the new NECO e-verification platform for the verification of results of admission-seeking candidates that sat for the National Examinations Council Senior School Certificate Examination.
Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, Mr. David Andrew Adejo, made this known during the unveiling of the NECO e-Verify platform on Thursday in Abuja.
Adejo, who expressed delight that NECO is ensuring its activities is aligning with global best practices, said the platform would go a long way in fishing out fake results, especially during the admission process.
He said: “Arising from the fact that tertiary institutions must verify and confirm results of candidates to be admitted into their schools, the need for recertification for results becomes very necessary.
“All Vice-Chancellors of universities, rectors of polytechnics, provosts of colleges of education, head of other tertiary institutions, including Innovation Enterprises Institutions are therefore mandated to make use of NECO e-Verify software for verifying all candidates that will be admitted who sat in NECO exam”.
Earlier, Registrar and Chief Executive of NECO, Professor Ibrahim Dantani Wushishi, said the “NECO e-Verify” is an Online Result Verification solution that guarantees instant authentication of academic and basic information about prospective candidates for admission and employment into academic institutions and workplaces respectively.”
According to the NECO boss, the platform was put in place to meet the growing need of Nigerians within and outside the country in the area of result verification.
“Prior to this time, all requests for verification and/or confirmation of results were routed through the Council’s Headquarters in Minna, which took a long time to process.
“Due to the growing need for verification and confirmation of results by institutions both at home and abroad, the Council decided that now was the best time to introduce the e-Verify platform.
“From available records at our disposal, we have observed that there were requests for verification and confirmation of results from sixty-four (64) institutions across thirty-seven countries over a two-year period (2020-2022).
“Similarly, we have such requests from seventy-two institutions in Nigeria within the same period-this is besides requests from individuals which are numerous.
“It is an irrefutable fact that academic institutions and employers of labour, among other agencies, rely on verification of results to help them select the best prospective students for admission and employment purposes.”
Also speaking, the Deputy Governor of Akwa-Ibom State, Akon Eyakenyi who was the chairperson of the event, commended Professor Wushishi for bringing the exam body to speed with modern times.
“Beyond making things easy for candidates, it will also generate revenue for NECO. NECO has done well. But NECO must also work towards ensuring full automation of all examination administration processes,” Eyakenyi, who was the acting chairman of the Senate Committee of Basic Education in the 9th Senate, said.
