The Federal Government has declared that there will be no going back on the full transition of the National Examinations Council (NECO), West African Examinations Council (WAEC), and other public examination bodies from paper-pencil to Computer-Based Test (CBT) mode of examination by 2026.
Minister of Education, Dr Olatunji Alausa, stated this during the monitoring of the pilot CBT Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) conducted by NECO at Sascon International School, Maitama, on Tuesday in Abuja.
A total of 1,367,210 candidates registered to participate in this year’s school-based SSCE, a figure NECO described as the highest so far.
Reacting to complaints by the public on the lack of adequate infrastructure to support the phasing out of paper-pencil examinations, Alausa disclosed that both privately-owned CBT centres and those belonging to public institutions would be fully deployed in the conduct of the examinations.
Alausa, who hailed NECO for the seamless conduct of the pilot phase of the CBT SSCE, said that in the future, school-based SSCEs would be moved to designated CBT centres, rather than being held within schools.
He said: “WAEC and NECO exams are school-based exams being conducted at their schools. No, we will move away from that.
“It is going to be like the way JAMB exams are conducted at CBT centres. We have thousands of CBT centres across the nation.
“Those are the centres that we are going to use. It’s not a case that students do not have the facilities. Schools do not have the facilities.
“We have enough people. We also have to expand the value chain of these CBT centres. They should not just service JAMB alone.
“They should be able to service WAEC and NECO. The proprietors of these businesses, the owners of these businesses, have invested billions of naira to set up these CBT centres. So we also have to help develop a new value chain in our economy.
“They will create jobs. You see a lot of computer hardware and software. And more importantly, we have entrepreneurs in Nigeria that are creating and developing these solutions. These are home-grown solutions. We should all be proud. Today, we should all stand tall and be proud of what we utilise.
“These are the kinds of opportunities that President Bola Tinubu is unleashing in every sector of his economy.”
Alausa further commended NECO for its preparedness to fully transition to CBT, noting that the pilot was a demonstration of capacity and commitment to reform.
“This is the first in the history of NECO, which is conducting its annual O-Level Certificate exams for SS3 students. This is a pilot that we pushed to have, and I must tell you, I was very impressed with what I saw.
“I have to commend the Registrar of NECO for the hard work that he and his team have deployed to get us to this stage, because when we decided that we’re going to go CBT, everybody thought this was an insurmountable task, but today, we’ve seen that this is a process, this is a transition that is possible.
“We just have to work hard to get there. We cannot continue with this madness of exam malpractice, our exams being caught with cheating and leaked questions—both WAEC and NECO. If we allow this to continue, it will destroy the capacity of our youth, of our children.”
He also disclosed a phased rollout of the CBT format across all school examinations, starting with objective questions this year.
“I’m a very happy person today that NECO has transited to CBT from paper-based. By November of this year, both NECO and WAEC objective exams will be fully CBT.
“And by next year, 2026, all the essays and objective exams will be CBT. NECO and WAEC will be joining the league of JAMB. We are making significant progress,” he added.
Source: Nigerian Tribune