Workers at the Minna, Niger State headquarters of the National Examination Council, yesterday, appealed to the Federal Government not to scrap the examination body.
The Federal Government had decided to implement the recommendations of the Oronsaye-Panel that listed NECO among 38 federal agencies that would be scrapped or merged with others. Though the Federal Government had not confirmed or denied the planned action, there was palpable tension in NECO.
The Niger State Commissioner for Education, Alhaji Abdulhameed Danladi, said though he believes government’s policies are dynamic and can be changed at any time, the decision to scrap the examination body must be given a second look in the overall interest of Nigerian educational development. He stressed that the nightmare Nigerians went through in the hands of WAEC should not be allowed to come back.
He pointed out that government has the right to make policies, but such should have positive bearing on the lives of the people because governance is all about people. “My concern about scrapping of NECO is about the over 5,000 Nigerians working there that will lose their job. “Here we are in a country where unemployment is on the high side and because of that, the government is coming up with a lot of programmes aimed at creating employment and mopping up unemployed youths from the streets and now you want to scrap NECO and increase the rate of unemployment in the country.”
He, however, argued that “what I don’t think is right is for government, in an attempt to solve one problem, start to create another. Examination is the only way to evaluate the performance of students and if you now scrap NECO, how do you evaluate candidates? If it is NECO that the Federal Government does not want, let them set up another one, but there must be an examination body that is wholly Nigerian.”
Danladi advised that rather than scrap NECO, the government should reposition it and add value to it for better performance.
Via Punch
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