Dantani Ibrahim Wushishi, registrar and chief executive of the National Examination Council (NECO), has reaffirmed the readiness of the council to tackle examination malpractice in the ongoing 2023 Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) for external candidates.
Azeez Sani, the acting director of information and digital communication at NECO made this known in a statement made available to the media where he urged the 74,819 candidates sitting for the 2023 examinations to shun malpractices.
“The registrar who is on nationwide monitoring of the examination has put in place necessary measures to ensure that the examination is seamless.
“Reports received from the various centres across the country indicated that the examination is going on smoothly,” the statement read.
The ongoing 2023 Senior School Certificate Examination for external candidates commenced on Monday, November 20, 2023, and it is expected to end on Wednesday, December 20, 2023.
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The candidates are to sit for examinations in 29 different subjects.
Earlier in October, the registrar said, a total of 12,030 candidates representing 0.07 percent of the total number of candidates who sat in the school–based examination were involved in various forms of malpractice.
Wushishi explained that the record is lower than the 13,595 (0.13 percent) recorded in 2022.
He revealed that many schools and supervisors were involved in the malpractice.
“93 schools were found to have been involved in whole school (mass) cheating, and 52 supervisors were recommended for blacklisting due to poor supervision, aiding and abetting during examination,” he revealed.
Not less than 20 states had many candidates involved in malpractice.
According to the examination body, examination malpractice occurred in Kaduna with 1,306, Kano had 1,289, Lagos-1,105, and Katsina-1,022, with the highest number of candidates involved.
Others are with the highest number of cases of malpractice include Borno with 790, Plateau, 717 and Niger 709, while states like Akwa Ibom had 591, Jigawa 551 and Nasarawa 503 candidates.
Kwara followed with 395 candidates, Osun 381, Gombe 339 while Sokoto followed with 285, Taraba 273, Oyo 215, Ogun 207 and Zamfara 190 candidates.
Other states are Ebonyi, which recorded 145 candidates, the FCT 102, Kogi and Enugu 94 candidates each and Rivers 92 candidates, Ondo had 90, Bauchi 85, Adamawa 70 and Delta 60 students involved in malpractice.
This is followed by Yobe with 57 candidates, while Abia and Ekiti have 41 and 39, respectively.
Six states record low number of cheating candidates among which are Imo State with 19, Anambra 13, Bayelsa 13, while Edo, Kebbi and Cross River states recorded the lowest numbers with 9, 3 and 3 respectively.
