“85, 000 Kano Candidates To Miss Admission Into Tertiary Institution if…”

NO fewer than  85,000 candidates that wrote the August/September National Examination Council (NECO) Senior Secondary School Examination may miss the opportunity to gain admission into tertiary institutions due to the examination body’s decision to withhold their results.

After a series of pressure, NECO released the much-awaited results on October 29th, 2021, essentially to pave way for millions of young candidates to secure admission.

However, candidates from Kano are incapacitated due to government failure to remit examination fees to NECO.

According to a reliable source, the Kano government is owing a backlog running into N500 million. Out of 85,000 candidates, about 26,000 candidates, less than 30 per cent are under the sponsorship of the state government while the remaining 70 per cent are candidates who made full payment to the state Ministry of education.

A reliable source in NECO office who prefer to remain anonymous revealed that the decision to withhold results of Kano candidates was not unconnected to the huge debt liabilities of the state government.

He disclosed that the results will not be released until the backlog is cleared.“Remember the results was delivered and that was large because of the paucity of fund to pay examiners and other staff engaged to conduct and mark the examination. And as you know several states are yet to pay including Kano.

“As for Kano, I know the government made a part payment previously, but there is a huge amount yet to pay running into N500 million. But I am surprised the government is still holding the money of candidates that actually pay from their pockets. These set of candidates constituted about 70 per cent of the entire students.”

Efforts to reach the Commissioner of Education, Mal. Sanusi Saidu Kiru, was not successful. He declined to pick calls and did not reply to text messages.

Meanwhile, Bayero University, Kano has postponed academic activities of 100 level students for two weeks to enable the opportunity of those awaiting their results to join the train.

The university management had earlier postponed the resumption of the new academic sessions by one month to allow qualified candidates to gain admission.

Similarly, Kano University of Science and Technology, Wudil, also postponed their post UTME screening to enable the awaiting results to gain admission.