The Registrar of the National Examinations Council (NECO), Professor Ibrahim Wushishi, has revealed that universities in the United Kingdom are interested in its examinations for admitting Nigerian students.
He said two universities have reached to know the level of credibility of NECO examinations so as to be used for admission.
Wushishi said this during an interactive session with journalists in Abuja on Wednesday.
The NECO registrar also spoke about the digitalisation and the potential migration to Computer-Based Testing (CBT), acknowledging its complexity to NECO examinations.
He disclosed that nearly 1.5 million students take exams in 76 different subjects and over 150 different papers annually for admissions into tertiary institutions, considering the possibility of CBT.
The professor said the challenges that come with CBT should be thoroughly dealt with in relation to NECO unlike other examination bodies like JAMB that primarily use multiple-choice formats.
“For the fact that NECO is the largest examination body by virtue of the number of examinations we conduct, migrating to CBT is a critical issue,” Wushishi said.
“For JAMB, they are not examining candidates in so many subject areas, so they find it very easy to embrace CBT in their examinations and do multiple choice in their exams.
“As far as NECO is concerned, if you look at the nature of our exams, particularly in SSCE internal for admissions into tertiary institutions, every year we examine students close to 1.5 million which is a large number.
“For these 1.5 million candidates, we examine them in 76 different subjects and more than 150 different papers.
“So if we look at the complexity of these exams, particularly the essays where we have different papers, going to CBT is something that experts need to sit down and look at the nitty gritty of the exams.
“We have to do that gradually, and there are some areas in our exams we could start with, like the common entrance examination, which is multiple choice-based, but then we must look at the nitty gritty of doing that.”
On curbing examination malpractices in its upcoming SSCE internal examinations, the NECO boss said there was no fear of exam leakages as it had put in place sophisticated mechanisms to check malpractices.
“We are putting in place programmes for continuous sensitisation awareness. We are going to improve in the area of data protection to protect our candidates’ information.
“We are getting sophisticated identities to check malpractices as well as identify fishing sites to know if our papers leaked.
“We have no fears of any malpractices in the conduct of our exams coming up in June,” he said.
