The National Examination Council, NECO, has withheld results if over 8,000 students due to the inability of the Kano State Government to clear debts.
The post-secondary school future of over 80,000 students in Kano state, hangs in the balance, a BBC Hausa report has alleged, because the state government could not pay their NECO examination fees amounting to over N 500 million.
According to the report, 70% of the students who sat for the NECO examination in 2021, were sponsored by their parents, but till date there is no news of when the examination body will release their results.
This development has made rights organisations to put pressure on the government so that the chances of going to higher institutions of these students during this session, are not jeopardised.
Kano state is among states such as Adamawa, Niger, and Zamfara that are owing NECO millions of Naira as a result of their inability to pay their students exams fee, the report said.
An affected student told the BBC Hausa that they are in a dilemma because post secondary institutions are about to close the admission exercise for the session.
He said he was awaiting the release of the NECO result so as to get admission into the university of his choice, but he may lose the chance if the problem persists.
” We tried and contacted our school, but we were told to continue being patient, and time is moving, I don’t know what will happen next,” he said.
Already, some rights groups have written to the State government, notifying it of the plight of the students and urged the government to take the necessary action.
Effort to reach the Commissioner for Education in Kano state, Sanusi Saidu Kiru, over the matter and hear from his side, was not possible.
However, the leader of an NGO in Kano, Comrade Umar Ibrahim Umar, said the complaints they got from students at a time tertiary institutions are about closing admission intake, made them to intensify the call for government to solve the problem.
Comrade Umar said they will take the necessary measures to see that the results are released to the students, because majority paid the exams fees themselves.
According to reports, NECO is being owed over N500m by the Kano State Government, despite the fact that last week, the state government said it has reduced the debt by paying N100 million.
The Kano state government has attributed the mounting debt to economic recession and inadequate flow of IGR.
However, there are reports that this is not the first time the Kano state government found itself in such situation, because every year there are complaints from students of the withholding of their results due to uncleared debts.
In April, over 20 thousand students who sat for their final year exams in Arabic and humanities, have their results withheld due to unsettled debts.
Last year, over 70 thousands students from the state could not get their NECO results until the state government paid the examination body over N640 million, according to the report.
