The National Examinations Council (NECO), Africa’s largest examinations assessment body, has witnessed remarkable transformations. In its quest to deliver credible and globally acclaimed assessment results, Its workaholic Registrar and Chief Executive, Professor Dantani Ibrahim Wushishi, upon assumption three years ago embarked on aggressive reforms to reposition the Council. Today it has yielded bountiful dividends. From redefining internal operational mode to restoring staffer’s confidence and welfare to tackling examinations malpractices using technology, Prof. Wushishi has a chronicle of achievements that would in a long time endure as legacy in an agency hitherto in search of self-discovery. In this interview, he spoke on the challenges of managing examinations, the security dimension and the connection with the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. It is a compelling reading.
Que: Just like yesterday, this July 2025 marks your third year in the saddle as the Registrar of NECO, looking down the memory lane, how would you describe the journey so far?
Ans: I was appointed in July 2021, by former President Muhammadu Buhari. It has been moments of hard work trying to solve challenges we met on ground. And as we open new frontiers, we open new challenges. But we give God the glory. We met a polarized institution where staff were largely aggrieved because they have not received work satisfaction as a result of unfair treatment. Complaints bothering on favoritism, nepotism, and among others were the first we tackled. The same issues that largely characterized our nation at one time or the other was the other of the day , the same that has polarized our nation. These were some of the things that I met on ground. And knowing that the National Examinations Council’s mandate was to conduct credible and acceptable examinations of which the integrity of the certificate must not be in doubt, we set out with the determination to redress all the anomalies. Credible examination assessment is sine qua non to strong and enduring national development. So fundamentally, we have this awareness. And we felt the stability of this institution is also the stability of the entire education sector in Nigeria, and we felt it is not something that we will take with levity. So the first thing I did when I took over was to look at the handover note. After going through the handover document, I say look, we need to go and see things for ourselves. So we embarked on a tour of some of the facilities we have across some of the states.
Que: What were your findings?
Ans: In fact, in offices we visited in the states, we met dilapidated structures and grossly inadequate office facilities. It was such that a zonal office was not provided with something as basic as chairs. In one zonal office, staff members were sitting on mats and benches. We felt it was an eyesore and certainly not good for our nation. And after observing the state offices, I found that almost 80% of the offices we have across the states including the zonal offices were rented apartments. And there were so many.things that were lacking, creating an unconducive atmosphere for a credible examination. So, first and foremost I focused on the provision of basic infrastructures for staff so that they will feel they belong to the council. We had to purchase chairs and tables and distribute them across the nation. The next thing we did was to neutralize the polarization among staff members, polarization occasioned by favouritism. It was who you know or which tribe you belong you could be sent for an assignment or be transferred from one office to another. I felt it is not good for each and every one of us in the council, and that was why, the first day after I took over, I declared that it must stop. From my understanding of NECO, it is like a miniature Nigeria, where you have a collection of almost all the tribes and ethnic groups from all the regions of the country. So it was for us to provide an environment where every staff member will feel they belong to the system and feel he or she is a major stakeholder in the system. As long as you are opportuned to be employed here as a Nigerian, I will work with you, except if you act otherwise.
Que: How did you fix the problems?
Ans: There are legal frameworks that will enable us to work and deliver on our mandates. The same legal framework has provided the means to deal with contraventions. We will invoke those legal frameworks in delivering on our mandate. It is as simple as that. And that is what we have been doing. And to God be the glory, we introduced for the first time, a software that provides us with the opportunity to post staff members, irrespective of where you come from, the tribe or religion you belong to. You have equal opportunity to be posted without fear or favour. So we introduced a software that captures all workers and seamlessly sends people for an assignment. So I constituted a committee called the annual posting calendar implementation committee. This annual posting calendar implementation committee is charged with the responsibility of handling anything that has to do with posting of staff for an assignment. So you don’t need to go and lobby anybody. You don’t need to know anybody. So long as you are a staff, you will be entitled to go out for an assignment to conduct examinations. We have five different examinations. Out of these five, at least you must go for one or two of the assignments, depending on your cadre. That was how we killed what is called favoritism or lobbying for assignment. And we have improved on the software. Now at the beginning of every year, you will receive an alert, not for money but an alert for the assignment you are entitled to for the year.
Que: We have seen reforms and so many of them have been explained fully in your previous interviews. We would like to have an insight into the next one year in the first instance of the first tenure. Secondly, we observed the challenges your sister agency was confronted with in exam management, particularly, the scandalous outing in its recent examinations exercise so much that even the federal government had to issue statements. Drawing from such experience, what do you think should be the guidelines in managing exams? If the experience of WAEC should serve as a lesson.
Ans: Actually, the integrity of any examination depends largely on the way and manner the processes of the examination are handled. So also is the confidentiality of the process itself. Now we have processes within the council. We have the pre-examination processes. We have processes during examination and we have processes we call post-examination processes. In the pre-examination process, which starts with generation of items in the various subject areas that you will use to administer for the candidates, the process of generating items must be complete and must equally be very credible. There are a lot of processes that take place during this pre-examination period to the period that items are accepted and typed in our typesetting center. A lot of items are generated in various areas of the syllabus, in all the subject areas, and there are several processes to handle such items. After an item writer has generated the item and left the table of the item, it goes to the psychometrics department. The Psychometric department will determine the psychometric properties of the items. To determine the difficulty
level, the discrimination index, and also draw a table of specification for all this in all the items being generated, both on objective test and on AC. So once the psychometric properties have been generated, have been analyzed, those that did not meet up with the required quality are dropped, or they are taken back again for restructuring. If they are restructured, they pass through the same process. If they meet up with the quality, then it is taken as one of the items to be to be administered. So in every exam, you find that it is not only one item that has been generated. There are three sets of items of equal psychometric properties that will be generated. So after all of them have been typed in the type setting room, no one after packaging them, no one knows the set that will be taken for administration of examination, so the three sets will be brought here in soft copy for all the subjects areas. Once we are ready for the press, I will select one out of the three items that will be used for that very examination. So as it left, as a type setting, no one knows which set is going to be taken. That is how we do it. When we select the set, we send it to the printing press.
At the printing press, we have overhauled the security structure for handling our questions, questions that go to the printing press. So there are so many things that we have introduced to make sure that the questions are adequately secured and in the press. CCTV cameras, footage of all that happens in the press will be sent to us for analysis after the examination. So there are a lot of processes which are confidential for us, and by the time it is going out for the examination to start. Now we are in the period of examination. We have the senior examination or the internal or school based examination that is ongoing. Now, schools are marked as centers, and we have about 26,000 centers and about 26,000 schools across the country. And as a result, we need to identify different points and warehouses that will secure question papers before distribution, which we call custodian points, then from custodian points, it is distributed to the schools. So we have daily distributors. We have non-daily distributors, depending on the route. We have our logistics highly secured, the over 70 vehicles we bought to beef our logistics have a Tracking System. So anywhere our vehicle is going it is tracked. Wherever you stop, we know where you stop from our handset. We monitor our vehicles movement when transporting both sensitive and non sensitive materials. Last year, we found it very easy to retrieve our vehicle after we were attacked in Edo. So our logistics handling is highly secured. We have our warehouse. There in a warehouse, all that is being done in the warehouse there is filmed. We have CCTV cameras installed to monitor whatever any staff is loading or offloading materials, and also at the point of conducting examinations. We make sure that we recruit invigilators that are credible from the school. Then we also have supervisors who handle our question papers and also handle the centers. So depending on the center, we determine the number of supervisors we will allocate to our center.
In some areas we have one supervisor, in some areas we have two, a supervisor and assistant supervisor, and there is no way you will open a paper before the examination, and before candidates enter into their classes, we conduct thumb printing, and that is biometric capture. We conduct biometric capture. There are so many processes to ensure security, even the the photo album we produce them, we also have the photo card, like examination card, where we have introduced bar code, which you can use your Android to find out whether if it is the candidate that is entering or not even inside the hall, you can use your Android to confirm whether the candidate is the same candidate, because the bio data of the candidate is there with the photograph of the candidate. So if it’s an impersonation, once you use your Android, you can know because the passport photograph will show. We have taken a lot of measures in handling our examinations during the examination itself. That’s why we post our staff to various centers to handle packaging and so many other things that have to do with the examination. Even after writing the paper, conveying them back to the office to package them for marking. So we ensure that a lot of security measures go with it during examinations. And during this examination, we have some technical monitoring officers within the council. We also used to have volunteers from organizations who request to monitor our examination. The focus, that is quality assurance
department of the Federal Minister of Education. Both young and old staff have that statutory duty, they are also monitoring our examination. Some commissioners also write to say they want to also monitor. We give them permission to monitor our examination. We also use security agencies, both plain and uniform security agencies, to monitor our examination. After each of our examinations, the President and Commander in Chief used to receive briefing on the conduct of our own examination, because security agencies monitor our own examinations across the state, so they send security reports about the examinations to the headquarters. At the headquarters, they meet and put the reports together when they are going to brief the president on any student matters in the nation, national examinations, conduct of exams is also reported to Mr. President.
Now we have cases of malpractice. We have forms where, if a candidate is caught, he fills the form, and we have a malpractice committee that comes to analyze the malpractice cases, and malpractice cases are also identified during examination and after examination, even during marking. So after the examination, the marking processes will begin after swapping the scripts. Those may be from the north, depending on the region, we swap them from the south. We swapped it not like that. So after the examination we come back then swapping will also begin. So after swapping question scripts that are marked already, we’ll have recruited examiners, trained them, because we call them for pre-counsel, what we call pre coordination. We brief them on whatever they are to do. The marking scheme and so many others must have been done here, and all these things done so we also brief supervisors and so many others before the examination to be addressed. With the conduct of the examination, there are a lot of challenges, particularly which had to do with logistics when I came but when we bought about 70 units of Hillux vehicles to assist transport logistics, the challenges reduced, though we still face some challenges because we had to also still ask some of our sister organizations to assist us, because the vehicles are not enough. They have to convey materials to states. They also have to convey materials to different parts of each of the states, like in the south south, we have to also buy boats to convey materials. So we have about two boats in operation during examination, which we bought to convey our materials in riverine areas.
So these are some of the challenges we face. The challenges that have to do with availability of offices, not rented apartments are not over yet. But gradually, we are getting over them. For more than 15 years, we have not been able to access budget Appropriation. But since last year, we were able to. In 2023. We were able to access budgetary allocation to build seven offices. And from our own budget, we have also earmarked to build three offices, which makes it 10 with the ones we are building in Kogi, Benue and Katsina states is nearing completion. We also do not have laboratories to carry out science practicals before going out to conduct practical examinations. We do conduct practicals in some of the schools around here that have equipment, but to God be the glory, we have started building our laboratory, one of them by the grace of God, by the end of the year, we are hoping that we finish building such a laboratory. We will not be going out to beg any school to give us access to conduct science practicals, which we are going to use to examine candidates. Some of these logistics things are the challenges, but we are gradually getting over them.
Que: When we came last year, you told us that NECO will not venture into Computer Based Tests (CBT) until you are confident of the state of readiness logistics wise. Just after then, the Minister of Education issued a directive making CBT compulsory from 2026. Where are we, how ready are you?
Ans: Well, I was having chat with some journalists about two or three months ago in Abuja on CBT, and I addressed the issue from two perspectives. The first perspective is that first and foremost, I am an academician. And as an academician, I looked at that issue from academic perspective. And from my experience as the Registrar, I will also look at it from the perspective of what the government requires us to do. When we look at the possibility of CBT, we are mindful that we don’t control schools that serve as exam centres. Education is in the concurrent list, as they used to say, the federal government handles its own schools. The states handle their own schools, and also local governments, I think they have primary schools that they handle. So when you look at this, the National Examinations Council’s mandate is to conduct examinations. And in conducting examinations it must not necessarily always be paper and pencil base. Whatever means you will deploy, you must guarantee the credibility and acceptability of the examinations results. You should innovate to do that. Now, if you look at the National Examinations Council, it is now that we are laying a solid foundation for the work to be done properly, because there are so many things that were lacking. Some basic things were absent. So it’s now that we are trying to make some of these things available, like offices and provisions of what’s supposed to be in the offices to make it conducive. Previously, we don’t even have sets of computers in our offices. We had to buy sets of three in one computers for all the state offices and zonal offices, including offices in our foreign offices, foreign countries. We don’t even have photocopiers in the offices. We have to buy photocopiers for all the states, zones and also foreign countries where they are conducting our examinations. We also have to buy generators to power this equipment. We bought generators for all the 37 or 36 states, including Abuja and six zonal offices. So these were the basic things that this institution supposed to have gotten and maintained for over 20 years of its existence, they were not there. It’s now we are making provision for it. It’s now that we’re making frantic effort to ensure that we
have our own offices in states as the largest examination body in Nigeria. We operate in a rented apartment. I said the largest examination body because there is no examination body in Nigeria that conducts the examinations that NECO conducts. We conduct five different examinations. No examination body conducts that. And our examinations cut across 76 different subjects. And that is why sometimes we pride ourselves to be the largest examination body in Africa. We go to our organizations meeting and we see and we hear the number of examinations they conduct, the number of candidates they cater for. There is none as big as this examination body. We are supposed to have gone far in 20 years than where we are today. But thank God we are making efforts. We are digitalizing the process. So when you look at CBT, 26,000 schools, then these 26,000 schools are supposed to have computer laboratories or CBT centers, at least with a minimum of 100 computers. And in a school where you have 1000 candidates for an examination, it means you have 10 sessions for one paper. Then, when will you even finish the examinations? Maybe, if the school has to take an examination in eight or nine subjects? The provision of a CBT center in that school by government financial commitment, will be massive only for that particular school. You imagine making provision for 100 computers for 26,000 centers. There must be servers in each of the centers that will be about 26,000 servers, then provision of CCTV and other security equipment to ensure that the center is well monitored. You imagine the kind of resources that will go into it. Now, if you look at the state government, how many states can even dare to say we are committing resources to make provision for all these things. The bulk of the schools we have are in the rural and semi rural areas. You have the problem of power even, even if you are going to deploy solar, then you need massive investment in high grade solar equipment that will power the system. And if you make provision for that, you also have to make provision for what will power the AC that will be cooling those systems when they are operating.
So, how many of these things are you going to make provision for in the interior villages, where you have secondary schools, where we have to take 24 hours or more on water before you get to the city. So where are you going to get the electricity to power those in those interior villages of may be Bayelsa, Port Harcourt or the interior areas of Borno or Sokoto, Oyo. So it’s not an easy thing to do. It doesn’t require high academic talks to know all these things and what is the condition or situations of our secondary schools across the states, there is no state that is exceptional. In this case, if you go to some states, you see dilapidated secondary schools. They are not taking care of talkless or providing CBT centers for this institution. What about the teachers that will teach the candidates even data processing or computers that they are even taking in our own examination. So it’s a whole lot of things that we needed to to look at, but the environment has provided us with certain alternatives. When the minister said, you must do CBT, we were thinking along these lines, and we made our feelings and the reality of the issue known practically. Us. But when the government said they needed it, there are alternatives and since the government has said they will provide us with certain opportunities to be able to operate, what do we do? Yes, we key into what the government wants. And wherever we have constraints, we run to them to let them know we have constraints, so of course, we will do our best. We have the capacity, because we have the professional staff do it as it is, as I’m talking to you. We are pilot testing on our own. We are pilot testing a CBT hybrid. In Lagos and Abuja. We have four schools conducting CBT exams in Abuja and three schools in Lagos. We are doing that on our own on all the subjects So we are test running that in preparation for next year. There are CBT centers in the National Open University, which are available in all states, capital of the states in the Federation. We can test run using some of those centers. We can also test run using centers that JAMB is also using. But there will be challenges, but we are ready to tackle them, because you see, if you have to also use those centers, you have challenges of moving students to new centers. You know, you have the challenge of moving those students.
Que: Briefly on the question of payment of N50,000 Naira for the printing of lost certificate sir. People are saying it is too costly. What do you think about that?
Ans: Well, on a lighter note, people will say if education is costly, try ignorance. You have, you have spent six years to get to secondary school. You have spent six years in secondary school to earn such a certificate. Then you are careless with the certificate, and it got lost and you come and just get it easily, and you go tomorrow, you be careless about it. I lost it again. So, for us to show to be protective of it and for candidates to understand the value of the certificate they are carrying. That it is not an ordinary paper. It is not the value of the paper. It is the value of what the paper carries. So you should value it and handle it very carefully in such a way that it is like your life, because it provides you with evidence of what you had previously and gives you an opportunity for the future. We felt you cannot come and request for a certificate, we gave you another one, you went and lost it, and still, you come back to say, you need an original certificate. If you lose it, for once, you pay N50,000 and we will give you an attestation. So people should be aware, so that they will be careful in handling their certificate. We have introduced a certificate wallet for the first time for you to secure your certificate against mutilation, against any other tampering which will render it invalid.
Que: Is this certificate wallet digital?
Ans: It is not digital. It is manual. We are not hoping to start a digital certificate now. We are not there.
Que: On exam security, we cannot deny the fact that sharp practices have really dropped judging from public opinion. What steps did you take to get this done?
Ans: When it comes to examination malpractice, it is something that I personally know, that it brings down the system or quality of education of any country. Having been in the examination arena for a very long time, in fact, the first time I was given employment in the university before my appointment letter, I was shown a table for an examination officer. This is your table as an examination officer of the department before they issue me an appointment letter. So I have been there since I was appointed, after two years, I became faculty examination officer. From there, I left university. I came to FUT Minna.
The moment I came, I became a member of the Task Force on examination for school of science and science education. And I also served as an examination officer of the department for postgraduate school, postgraduate. So, all through, I know what examination is and what malpractices really mean to education. The first thing is, you need to be aware of the ease of examination malpractice. When we brief our staff to go for an assignment to conduct an exam, we make the Council’s position clear on examination malpractice, and from the feedback we are having, we devise ways and means to make sure that such is reduced to the various minimum. Awareness about the ills is very important. And in Niger State, we sponsor School Challenge among secondary school students -a quiz session to sensitize candidates about the issue of examination malpractices. We have taken several measures to sensitize supervisors and assistant supervisors and invigilators. And we have held a seminar in conjunction with the National Assembly in three regions in southwest, south, south and north central, to sensitize stakeholders on the issue of examination malpractices.
Also, we sponsor jingles on national radio – Radio Nigeria, NTA among others on the dangers of examination malpractices to an individual and a nation. What it does to any nation and its entire education system. The measures we are taking by training our staff on how to identify malpractice cases also improve the way and manner we handle examination malpractice, the remuneration, the encouragement we are giving staff, making them aware that there are major stakeholders of the system also contribute a lot in boosting morale of staff, to make sure that they protect the integrity of the examination, because the integrity of the institution is their own personal integrity as staff of the institution. So whatever happens to the examination happens to your own personality. We have sensitized them and we don’t delay any staff allowance, whatever you are supposed to have as your entitlement, we don’t delay it once there is money. And as far as promotion is concerned, if you score, you pass. If you don’t pass, you don’t pass. You don’t need to go and lobby anybody to pass. And if there is a vacancy for a director to be appointed, you don’t need to know me or know anybody. In fact, if you go to lobby, you have missed it.
Many of my directors who were appointed here were informed by their colleagues. Some of them were sleeping. They got congratulations calls without any prior knowledge. We set out criteria for appointing a director. If a director retires from a particular region, we find out how many states have produced directors in such a region. Give us a list of seniority from the region and by state, if your state has produced one or two and there are two other states, these other two states are knock outs. Whoever is the most senior from these other two states will be picked and you are given a letter as a director. That’s how I’ll do my appointment as a director. So you can wake up and become a director. So they try as much as possible to own the system, like, for instance, in the university, the professors are aware they own the university system, so they must protect the interest of the university. So I told them, as far as I’m concerned, if you are in the directorate Cadre, you own this institution. You must protect this institution. There are flash points, Flash areas where younger ones are given to handle and are prone to malpractice, leakages of question papers. I will not allow that to continue. If you are given more rank or high rank, it means more responsibility. So you must own the system. Henceforth, those that are going to be custodian officers, where we are going to be keeping our question papers, and from the point we will be distributing them for the schools, must be from the directorate level. Don’t think you are a director or assistant director or deputy director. I will just send you to carry the pen and paper you are monitoring. No, you must protect the integrity of the institution. So you must be given a sensitive position to hold. Yes, you give a young boy, he goes and does what he wants and collects money. Do that and spend 25 years in prison. So these are some of the things we have introduced.
Then we make sure that during the examination, we swap supervisors. We swap supervisors and you no longer supervise a particular school to the end. We have introduced selection of supervisors through software. It’s no longer manual. So some of these things assist a lot in curbing malpractices and ensuring that our examinations went on seamlessly. And the same thing for the examination administrators. We don’t recruit young ones as administrators. Yes, we also recruit those that are at the level of assistant directors or senior chief to be examination administrators. For instance, you have a state coordinator. On a normal basis, he’s in charge of the entire state, but during examinations like this, we will send an administrator who will be in charge of all the processes of the examination in the state, with the state coordinator being under him. So he controls the distribution of all our question papers. He knows who he sent to any route. We have identified flash routes, and we have taken measures to do that. We have also constituted an Examination Intelligence Committee (EIC) in the council. We have EIC headed by a doctor who is a director of quality assurance. So many of my staff don’t know that we have this. We monitor the conduct of our staff during examinations and also what happens outside. We collaborate with ICPC, EFCC in making sure that some of these things are monitored.
Police have a unit for monitoring the web because there is this phishing website that they use in leaking question papers. So we devise means of making sure that we track down these sources. The entire examination intelligence committee is working together with these agencies, with even Nigerian police that control the monitoring of the wave system, to make sure that at least we curb the possibilities of malpractices. In fact, we have some cases in court that we picked last year because we picked somebody from Enugu, that was after the examination, after tracking and following up with the police. We picked one from Enugu and we picked one at another location. We are still picking those that we have identified last year, so we were correcting our lapses for this year. Logistics had a lot of impact. That gave us a setback last year, because the person that we picked from Enugu, the Police, did not take him to court on time. Then the order came from above that we are keeping him for more than 48 hours. He has to be bailed, and it went like that. So we have facilitated the committee with logistics to be able to pick on time and also take to court. So we have already taken the person to court, but the police made some mistakes. Instead of taking the guy to the high court, they took him to the magistrate. So we had that issue of jurisdiction, you know, but we are almost on top of the situation, at least, to set an example. All these things we are doing.
Que: On some states’s indebtedness to NECO?
Ans: Well, I may not be able to give you how much is remaining, but a lot of states understand the need for them to release money for us. The highest debt today is Zamfara state, we have given them a lot of options for installment payment. But, you know, politicians, but I’m happy that we have reached a consensus. They started paying their backlog and since last year, they have not but because they did not pay for the previous term, we held the results, so we have agreed now, and they have started paying. So we have only very few. In fact, almost all the states that are owing for last year, some previous years, are paying. They gave us a payment plan, and they are meeting up with their commitment.
Que: Still on security of examinations?
Ans: I guarantee integrity of examinations and also in conducting examinations and also marking of scripts. Precision in doing so is very important. We have 76 subjects, close to 120 different papers. And out of these 120 or out of these 76 subjects, almost all the subjects have objectives, where we use an optical mark reader, where you shade. So you imagine mathematics which is compulsory for all candidates. English language is compulsory for all candidates. Civic Education is compulsory for all candidates. Now, if you have 1.3 million candidates for obj English, then you have 1.3 million OMR, then for civic education, 1.3 million. OMR, for my part, is 1.3 million OMR, that will give you maybe close to 4 million OMR. Then 76 minus three. It will remain about 73 different subjects. Then, although we know there are some subjects that we don’t have many candidates, yet they will still write the objectives. So at the end of it, you will have OMR to mark close to 10, 12 million. And you need a machine to scan each OMR, score it and send the result to the server and wait also for analysis. So when I came, I met them using a DRS scanning machine that only has a capacity of 900 papers per hour. We had, at that time when I came, more than 60 broken down and less than 50 serviceable. So we said, those that are responsible for bringing spare parts, which is one Um, I’ve forgotten the name of the company in Lagos. You are no longer bringing the parts. We have to trace the company in the UK. We had to travel to London. We traced the company to London, I think Eastman? Just to find out that they have decommissioned the scanning machine more than a year ago? So it’s not in the international market. They’re no longer producing it. So, you mean we cannot buy, we cannot have new and they say they don’t have any new one. The only thing they have is some of the parts that are left over. We had to buy all the parts, those that they cannot test, they have to dash us. So we have to ship them to Nepal. Those are what we use to revive some of those things we are using now. Since they are decommissioned, we have to look out to see where we can have a more efficient scanner. That’s how we stumble on Scantron, a company that produces scanners. They have their representative in West Africa representative in Ghana. So we contacted her, Brenda, we arranged and traveled to the United States of America, in Minnesota, where the company was located. We went and saw how they are producing the scanner, and you have to even book. It’s not that they are producing it and keeping it because, yes, because they have to also be sure that somebody is buying it. We met one in the process of being assembled. They showed all the skeletal and how they were also assembled and that was how we sealed the business. This is a very powerful machine that can scan 15,000 OMR per hour. So by the time you have three, you have reduced time to process your results and it doesn’t have ink like the DRS. Yes, it can scan any color. So we don’t have a problem changing some of these.
Que: Prof, life is a phase. What would you like to be remembered for in terms of your legacy as Registrar of this organization?
Ans: Well, I came with the consciousness that I must leave one day because I was not here before, I was somewhere. I left that place, went to Sokoto, left Sokoto, Minna, left Minna to this place and I must leave here for somewhere. What I would love to be remembered for is that I, and my colleagues, I call them colleagues, even the cleaner is my colleague. My colleagues because he is very important in the chain of conduct of examinations. If he doesn’t clean the office, you will not find it conducive to work. If he doesn’t keep the toilet clean, you will not find it conducive to work. So we are all colleagues doing this job to ensure that we deliver on our mandates. Therefore, I will want to be remembered with my colleagues as someone that has repositioned the National Examinations Council and has placed it on a pedestal for continued innovation in the assessment industry in Nigeria, Africa and the world.
