Professor Dantani Ibrahim Wushishi, the Registrar and Chief Executive of the National Examination Council of Nigeria (NECO), has urged the Federal Government to remove the Examinations body from the list of agencies required to contribute 25percent of their income to the Treasury Single Account (TSA).
The Registrar stated that the Council’s continued demand for 25percent of its Examinations fees will soon cripple its operations, given the payments are intended for the conduct of examinations.
Professor Wushishi contends that NECO should be viewed as a social service organization rather than one designed to produce revenue for the government, and that it should be exempted from remitting 25percent of its examinations to the government.
“We’ve made our case through the Ministry of Education , and we are hopping that something positive should be done”.
“We believed that the government would listen and respond to our demands so as the cater for the numerous challenges facing the examination body because the continuous remittance of the 25 Percent from what the organization collect as Fees will cripple our activities”, he added.
In addition to this, Professor Wushishi also argued that the new Duty Traveling Allowance (DTA) recently approved by the President will further compound the problems of the Council, as it will have no choice than pay the adjusted DTA, adding “we have to source for the money from our earning such as the examination registration fees to be able to pay”.
According to him, “From our calculation we need over N2 billion to be able to withstand the new DTA recently approved by the government”.
The Registrar however appreciated the federal government for the recent approval of over N4Billion for the Council but added that the council needs more funding from the government to cater for other activities.
He pointed out that the amount approved would largely be used in servicing the debt from already supplied sensitive and non sensitive materials for conducting exams.