The federal government says privately-owned computer-based test (CBT) centres and others belonging to public institutions will be fully deployed in conducting school-based Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) by 2026.

The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, disclosed this during the monitoring of a pilot CBT SSCE conducted by the National Examinations Council (NECO) at Sascon International School, Maitama, on Tuesday in Abuja.

Mr Alausa hailed NECO for the seamless conduct of the exercise and said future school-based SSCEs would be moved to designated CBT centres, rather than being held within schools.

“WAEC and NECO exams are school-based exams being conducted at their schools. But we will move away from that.

“It is going to be like the way JAMB exams are being conducted at CBT centres. We have thousands of CBT centres across the nation.

“Those are the centres that we are going to use. It’s not the case that students do not have the facilities or that schools do not have the facilities.

“We have enough people. We also have to expand the value chain of these CBT centres. They should not just be to service JAMB alone,” he said.

Mr Alausa explained that the nationwide CBT centres should be able to service WAEC and NECO, noting that the proprietors of these centres had invested billions of naira to set them up.

“So, we also have to help develop a new value chain in our economy.

“They will create jobs. You see a lot of computers, hardware, and software. And more importantly, we have entrepreneurs in Nigeria that are creating and developing these solutions,” he said.

The minister commended NECO for its preparedness to fully transition to CBT, stressing that the pilot project demonstrated capacity and commitment to reform.

“I have to commend the registrar of NECO for the hard work that he and his team have deployed to get us to this stage, because when we decided that we’re going to go CBT, everybody thought this was an insurmountable task.

“I’m a very a very happy today that NECO has transitioned to CBT from paper-based. By November this year, both NECO and WAEC objective exams will be full CBT.

“And by next year, all the essays and objective exams will be CBT. NECO and WAEC will be joining the league of JAMB. We are making significant progress,” he said.

On his part, NECO registrar Ibrahim Wushishi expressed the readiness of the examination body for CBT.

“NECO is ready as a professional body to conduct examinations using any medium.

“We may have challenges of infrastructure, that is obvious, but then that will not bog us down not to do it. There are facilities that will give us the opportunity to conduct CBT, and we are good to go for that,” the registrar stated.

Mr Wushishi called on government at all levels to speed up the provision of CBT infrastructures in their states, noting that this would highly support the process.

He also revealed that 1,367,210 candidates registered for the 2025 SSCE, the highest figure so far.

According to him, of these number, 685,551 are male and over 681,300 are female.

He added that Kano State had the highest number of registered candidates, with more than 137,000, while Kebbi had the least, just above 5,000.

He also noted that the centre with the lowest number of candidates was the Nigerian International School in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which registered eight students.

The vice chairman, Senate Committee on Education (Basic and Secondary), Samson Ekong, pledged lawmakers’ commitment to implementing every measure that would ensure a seamless transition to CBT exams.