Education stakeholders in Ilorin on Monday expressed divergent views on the Federal Government’s plan to scrap the National Examination Council (NECO) and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UMTE).

A cross-section of people, who shared their views with the Royal Times correspondent wanted the NECO retained, but argued that scrapping of UMTE was long overdue.

Alhaji Kuranga Omomeji, the chairman of the Kwara chapter of All Nigeria Conference of Principals of Secondary schools (ANCOPSS) vouched for NECO, claiming that the examination body with the period of its establishment had done well for the country.

According to him, government must have got its own reason, but by and large the fact remains that the institution has done a lot of good to the citizens of this country, though, there could be lapse in term of examination malpractice with NECO and mass failure, but you can’t divorce this from the general decadences in the education sector in the country.

Omomeji, who is the Principal of Baboko Community Secondary School, Ilorin noted that the West African Examination Council (WAEC) was not an alternative to NECO because the former was a regional examination body, while NECO was established by Nigerian government, arguing that NECO should be more appropriate than that of its compromising regional countries.

On UMTE, the head of Kwara principals forum berated the examination and explained that the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) had not done enough well in the conduct of the examination.

Mr Mohammed Mahmud, an Educationist at the Kwara Teaching Service Commission warned government against the plan, claiming that it would amount to monopoly, explaining that government should regulate the conduct of the examination bodies and address the problem identified rather than scraping.

Mahmud claimed that NECO had since inception broken the monopoly of WAEC and noted that Nigeria enjoyed telecommunication because of its competition.

Prof Lanrie Aina of the University of Ilorin in his opinion however backed the Federal Government’s plan on the two government institutions.

Aina noted that both institutions duplicated what other establishments could do, saying that “I support the Federal Government’s plan.

“NECO is duplication of WAEC and UMTE is what Nigeria Universities can do.

The varsity don asserted that staffers of NECO could be absolved by the WAEC and majority of JAMB staff could go to Universities to douse the tension of disengagement