Akwa Ibom disputes NECO performance ranking but has not released cited data
The Akwa Ibom government has challenged a report ranking the state near the bottom of the 2026 NECO examination results, saying results from 83 public-school centres remained outstanding. The report’s publisher says the government has not provided the official data or centre list supporting its rebuttal.
The Akwa Ibom State Government has disputed a report ranking it 36th among Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory in the 2026 NECO Senior School Certificate Examination, but it has not released the official data it says contradicts the ranking. The state’s information commissioner, Aniekan Umanah, and education commissioner, Ubong Umoh, said results from 83 of 214 public-school examination centres had not been released. They described the report by PREMIUM TIMES as false.
However, PREMIUM TIMES said the government had not supplied the NECO document, performance figures or list of centres requested to support the claim. The publication said it obtained state-by-state performance data from NECO. According to the figures reported by PREMIUM TIMES, 7,754 of 20,720 Akwa Ibom candidates secured at least five credits, including English Language and Mathematics.
That represented 37.42 per cent and placed the state ahead of only Sokoto on the report’s percentage-based ranking. The figures were also reported by other media organisations, including the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, BusinessDay, Punch, the Nigerian Television Authority and Channels Television, according to PREMIUM TIMES. The dispute includes a disagreement over how results should be ranked.
The state government said NECO’s data placed Kano, Lagos and Oyo first, second and third. PREMIUM TIMES said those states led in the absolute number of candidates meeting the benchmark, while its own ranking measured the proportion of successful candidates in each state. On that basis, Abia ranked first with 81.78 per cent, followed by Ebonyi with 81.03 per cent and Ekiti with 77.68 per cent.
Kano recorded 74,413 successful candidates but had a 45.85 per cent success rate because it had a much larger candidate population. NECO announced its 2026 results in Minna on September 24. It said 1,371,992 candidates sat the examination and 804,948, or 58.67 per cent, obtained at least five credits including English and Mathematics.
The supplied material says it remains unclear whether the 83 centres cited by Akwa Ibom were excluded from the figures or had results withheld for another reason.
This independently written report is based on information supplied by the named publisher. Vertrix News has not independently verified the source report.