NECO’s Unexpected Renaissance By Abdullahi O Haruna Haruspice
When Professor Dantani Ibrahim Wushishi assumed office as Registrar of Nigeria’s National Examinations Council (NECO) in mid-2021, few would have bet on the agency’s revival. At the time, NECO was adrift—plagued by infrastructural decay, bureaucratic inertia, and waning public trust. Four years later, the transformation has been so thorough that it offers a rare case study of public-sector reform in Africa.
NECO’s reinvention has not come by accident. Prof. Wushishi, an academic by training but a reformer by temperament, approached the role with a candour unusual in Nigerian bureaucracy. His first inspection tours revealed a depressing picture: decrepit offices, staff without basic amenities, and a system that had lost the confidence of both students and parents. Yet his response was not despair but action. Toilets were built where bushes had served as lavatories; power generators and boreholes appeared in state offices; ICT infrastructure was upgraded from the ground up. For an institution long dismissed as sluggish, this was a jolt.
The most visible change has been in examinations themselves. Under his watch, results of the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE), Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), and National Common Entrance Examination (NCEE) have been released promptly—a novelty in a country where delays once jeopardised university admissions. Punctuality, a seemingly small matter, has been central to restoring trust. Parents, students, and schools now plan with certainty. More than timeliness, credibility has deepened. The adoption of stanine software for grading and a fully digital e-Posting system for staff deployment replaced opaque, manual processes. These reforms curbed the corrosive favouritism that often breeds internal rancour. Likewise, the launch of e-Verify, a digital certificate authentication platform, attacked certificate fraud head-on—an innovation that companies and universities now find indispensable.
But technology alone would not have sufficed. Prof. Wushishi recognised that NECO’s people—its staff and examiners—were its weakest link, not for lack of talent but because of poor morale. He moved swiftly: promotions became transparent; allowances were paid in full and on time; and, for the first time, high-performing staff were publicly rewarded. Training workshops mushroomed, from psychometrics to data analysis, and even fire prevention and defensive driving. In 2023, NECO staged its first productivity awards, a symbolic but telling gesture in a system long starved of recognition. The payoff has been palpable. Industrial calm has replaced the low-level grumbling that often undermined productivity. Staff now describe NECO not merely as a workplace but as an institution with a mission.
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In an era when national exams can no longer afford to be parochial, NECO has gingerly extended its reach abroad. Schools in Saudi Arabia, Niger, Equatorial Guinea, and Togo have been accredited to run NECO examinations—an unprecedented export of Nigeria’s assessment model. While still nascent, this suggests that NECO could one day become not just a domestic examining body but a regional standard-bearer, akin to Britain’s Cambridge Assessment or West Africa’s WAEC. Internationally, NECO under Wushishi has not shied away from intellectual diplomacy. Its active participation in the Association for Educational Assessment in Africa (AEAA) and the International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA) has put it in conversations that matter. The Registrar’s election to AEAA’s Executive Council in 2024 is no small feat for an institution once invisible beyond Nigeria’s borders.
Yet it would be naïve to romanticise. Some of NECO’s challenges remain unresolved. Nigeria’s examination system is still vulnerable to malpractice at the grassroots, fuelled by parental pressure and porous school administration. Digital innovations, while laudable, remain unevenly applied in rural areas with patchy electricity and internet. And like many public-sector bodies, NECO remains tethered to federal purse strings, limiting its financial autonomy. Even Prof. Wushishi’s infrastructural upgrades—generators, boreholes, computers—though vital, highlight the persistence of a larger problem: the Nigerian state’s inability to provide basic utilities consistently. NECO has insulated itself, but the wider ecosystem of public education remains fragile.
Still, the scale of progress is hard to dismiss. NECO, once derided as a laggard to WAEC, now looks leaner, faster, and more credible. It has demonstrated that even in Nigeria’s unwieldy public sector, reform is possible if leadership is clear, priorities are sharp, and systems are digitised. What does this mean more broadly? For one, it shows that the “rot” in Nigerian bureaucracy is not irreversible. Prof. Wushishi’s tenure proves that efficiency is less about resources than about will and vision. His reforms did not hinge on billion-naira budgets but on discipline, accountability, and the courage to demand better.
It also underscores the symbolic power of institutions. NECO’s punctuality in releasing results may seem mundane, but in a country where uncertainty is endemic, reliability itself becomes revolutionary. Students now know where they stand; universities can plan admissions without guesswork; parents can trust an institution that once inspired cynicism. And it suggests a template for other agencies: digitise ruthlessly, reward staff fairly, confront inefficiency directly. These are hardly groundbreaking prescriptions. But in Nigeria, where rhetoric often outpaces results, NECO’s quiet but visible improvements are nothing short of remarkable.
As Prof. Wushishi’s first four years close, NECO is no longer merely a custodian of exams; it is a symbol of what Nigerian institutions might look like if competence were matched with integrity. His reforms may not have solved every structural problem, but they have shifted expectations—and in governance, expectations often determine outcomes. The irony, perhaps, is that NECO’s renaissance under Wushishi will now raise a question that haunts all reformers: what happens after him? Can the systems he has built outlive his tenure, or will they wither once the reformist leaves? The durability of his legacy will depend not just on him but on the institutional culture he has seeded.
For now, though, it is fair to say that NECO, once a bureaucratic backwater, has become a beacon of possibility. And in Nigeria, where cynicism about public institutions runs deep, that may be the most radical achievement of all.
Abdullahi O Haruna Haruspice writes from Abuja
