The National Examination Council (NECO) in Nigeria has developed e-Verify, an online system that will validate the results of its various examinations.
This declaration was made by the council during a meeting in Abuja that also included key figures such as the Secretary of the Government of the Federation and members from the Federal Ministry of Education.
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Why e-Verify was introduced
People will be less likely to use fabricated findings for the aim of gaining employment or admittance to a university due to e-Verify.
e-Verify will streamline the process of verifying results while simultaneously preventing fraudulent use of test results. Prior to this point, any request for NECO to verify a candidate’s results had to be sent to the head office in the state of Niger.
Prof. Dantani Wushishi, the Registrar of NECO, made these statements during the launch of e-Verify. He stated that e-Verify would give speedy verification of results in addition to other benefits such as higher confidence, decreased likelihood of forgery, and increased operational efficiency.
Between the years 2020 and 2022, Wushishi disclosed that the examination organisation has received questions for result verification and confirmation from a total of 64 academic institutions located in 37 different countries. Within the same time range in Nigeria, the NECO registrar disclosed that identical petitions were received from seventy-two different institutions.
According to him, the motivation for the development of this product was the rise in the number of requests for result verification from institutions not only in Nigeria but also in other countries.
In the meantime, the federal government has informed the heads of higher institutions to begin using the e-Verify portal for candidates of the most recent NECO senior school certificate test. This was done in order to prevent fraudulent use of the system. This was disclosed to the general public when e-Verify was first introduced.
Other Exam bodies that have done so
It is important to keep in mind that the Nigerian Examinations Council (NECO) is not the first examination authority in the country to roll out a verification portal.
The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has introduced a digital platform with the intention of making the process of authenticating certificates and issuing them more straightforward. Recovery of lost examination numbers, a requirement for verifying findings, is another function that can be performed through the portal.
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Remarks from NECO officials
“The ‘NECO e-Verify’ is an Online Result Verification solution that guarantees instant authentication of academic and basic information about prospective candidates for admission and employment into academic institutions and workplaces respectively,” NECO’s Registrar Prof. Dantani Wushishi said.
“Vice Chancellors of universities, rectors of polytechnics, provosts of colleges of education, head of other tertiary institutions, including Innovation Enterprises Institutions are therefore mandated to make use of NECO e-Verify software for verifying all candidates that will be admitted who sat in neco exam,” remarked David Andrew Adejo, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Education. He stated that this move would ensure that only candidates with valid results would be considered for admission.