No fewer than 75,635 candidates nationwide on Saturday sat for the National Examinations Council common entrance in the 36 states of the country and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

The acting Registrar of NECO, Abubakar Gana, said the candidates sat for the examination in 457 centres nationwide, including one centre in Port Novo, Benin Republic.

Gana said the results of the examination would be released on Wednesday by the agency through the Ministry of Education.

He urged parents to check the NECO’s website for the results.

Our correspondent learnt that Lagos State recorded the highest number of registered candidates with 23,459 pupils while Zamfara State had the lowest with 59 candidates.

The registrar said, “The results are expected to be released by NECO to the Federal Ministry of Education on Wednesday, May 1, 2019, after which the ministry will direct NECO to release them to the public after the selection exercise.

“Candidates are to check the status of their admission both at the various federal unity colleges and online via the NECO website as soon as the release of the results is announced.”

The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, who monitored the NECO examination in Abuja, said the Federal Government had begun the renovation and rehabilitation of 104 unity colleges in the country.

He said the rehabilitation included replacement of broken toilets, ceilings, creation of additional classrooms and the renovation of existing ones.

The minister said the renovation was directed by President Muhammadu Buhari and was aimed at expanding access to education in the country.
He added that about 25,000 pupils would be given admission into the colleges nationwide.

Adamu, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Sonny Echono, said, “We have a challenge of access to education in this country. As part of our interventions to ensure that we bring more children into the school system and reduce the number of kids who are out of school, we have so many programmes. One of them is to increase the spaces available in our unity colleges.

“You are aware that each time we do this, there are other consequential interventions that are needed. You need to have additional classrooms; you need to have additional teachers.

“We are pleased that Mr President has approved that we should begin to rehabilitate many of these unity colleges. Besides the security infrastructure, we are now providing new classrooms and rehabilitating the dilapidated ones. We are also dealing with the libraries, laboratories and so on.”