The Bayelsa State Government says the low performance ranking of the candidates from the state who sat the National Examination Council (NECO) internal examination 2024, is due to low registration of candidates, and not poor academic performance.
NECO had on Tuesday released the performance of all the candidates in each states of the countries, including some West Africa countries such as Niger Republic, Cote D’Ivoire, Benin Republic, Togo and Equatorial Guinea, where Bayelsa was ranked 36.
Reacting to the public condemnation on the Bayelsa State performance in the examination, the state Commissioner for Education, Dr Gentle Emelah, said the recent ranking by NECO did not mean that students from the state performed poorly but it was mainly caused by low registration.
Emelah, in a statement by his Media Assistant, Mr Onisoman Kos-Ikah on Wednesday, advised parents in the state to encourage their wards to register for NECO, describing it as Nigeria’s foremost examination body that should be prioritized.
He said: “The claims that Bayelsa State has been poorly ranked by the National Education Council (NECO) is not true. The performance was not due to poor academic performance but rather due to low registration of candidates.
“According to verifiable statistics on the said document trending online, 6,961 candidates registered for the 2024 examinations while 6,876 candidates sat for the examination.
“Out of this figure, public schools had 4,633 while private schools registered 2,243. The ranking of Bayelsa State in the 2024 NECO SSCE Examination was due to low registration as clearly seen by the analytical breakdown of the results below:
“5,177 students scored 5 credits and above including in Mathematics and English Language meaning only 1,699 students had less than 5 credits which is in no way a poor performance.
“As seen on the data, some states registered as much as 147,000 candidates as against Bayelsa with 6876. Recall, on the 11th of July 2024, the Registrar of NECO, Prof. Dantami Ibrahim Wushishi, personally paid a visit to Bayelsa State in a bid to strengthen ties with the state and improve enrollment.
“Bayelsans are therefore advised to kindly disregard the misinformation as the data is clearly not well understood by those trying to analyze it on social media.
“Our educational sector under His, Excellency, Senator Douye Diri, is on a steady rise and government is poised to do even more.”
