The National Examination Council, NECO, plans to remit N1.2 billion to the Treasury Single Account, TSA, at the end of its examinations season this year.
This is against N320 million and N350 million remitted by the agency to the TSA in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
Prof. Charles Uwakwe, Registrar/Chief Executive of NECO, who stated this during an interactive session with newsmen, Monday, in Abuja, said improved amount will gladden the stakeholders, lamenting that some state governments were indebted to the body to the tune of N3.2 billion.
Uwakwe stated, “Talking about remittance to the Federation Account in 2016, we remitted about N320 million and for 2017 after the assessment has been done, we are also very hopeful that we will remit about N530 million to the Federation Account.
He observed “With the current budget because we have gone a bit back and forth, we are also hopeful, we anticipate that we should be able to remit up to N1.2 billion.
“It is an experiment we are running in the sense that we want to as much as possible to task ourselves but we are hopeful that this experiment will work. Remitting up to a billion naira to the Federation Account will gladden the heart of all stakeholders.
“A lot of times people tend to compare, like I said earlier, we are certification exam body in Nigeria, in other words there are a lot we have to put in place to ensure that the scores and grade of each of these students represent their intellect and efforts.
“And for us, that is a challenge and in doing that standards cannot be compromised and maintaining or sustaining standards requires that you do not cut corners in expenditures in running the exams to ensure that quality is sustained. So for us it is a balance we have to strike but we are doing our best.”
