Minna — The National Examination Council (NECO), has said that it required over N2 billion for the payment of allowances to its staff on examination duties.
NECO, it could be recalled, conducted the May/ June Senior School Certificate Examination, the November/December external SSCE as well as the National Common Entrance Examination for placement of pupils in secondary schools in the country.
Speaking on the sidelines of the just-concluded workshop on Quality Assurance organised for its staff in Minna, the Registrar and Chief Executive Officer of NECO, Professor Dantani Ibrahim Wushishi, said that no less than 4000 staff were engaged for the supervision of the May/June examinations alone.
The federal government, according to Wushishi, approved an increase in Duty Travel Allowance (DTA) payable to each supervisor and examiner from N16,000 to N37,500 per annum.
Wushishi said the examination body did not have the money to pay such allowance and therefore asked for federal government’s intervention, adding that NECO is however not opposed to the government’s directive that it should remit 25 per cent of examinations fees it collected from candidates to the federal purse.
He appealed to the federal government to come to the aid of the council so that it would be in a strong position to discharge its duties responsibly.
Earlier Professor Wushishi had charged staff of the examination body to protect its reputation and image through diligent observance of acceptable norms in the assessment both nationally and internationally.
He declared the workshop open, noting that “all services rendered to our teeming clients must not run short of internationally accepted standards” adding that “Procedures followed during the provision and rendering of the services must also conform to globally accepted assessment practices.”
The registrar said the admonition has become necessary because NECO is a member of international assessment organisations whose products are candidates that seek admissions and jobs in both national and international academic institutions and organisations.
“It is our hope that this workshop will equip the participants with the required skills to compete favorably with their counterparts both nationally and internationally,” he said, adding that “it is for this reason that consultants are engaged to anchor the programme.”