There are moments when a policy decision reveals more than incompetence; it reveals a loss of identity. The National Examinations Council has just provided such a moment. In its quiet, bureaucratic manner, NECO has done what even colonial masters did not dare to do completely it has removed Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa from the examination that is supposed to certify a Nigerian as educated.
Last week, I went to a cybercafé in Ibadan to help a private candidate register for the 2026 NECO Senior School Certificate Examination External. The young man, an apprentice who speaks flawless Yoruba and wanted to use it to make his five credits for admission to a College of Education, looked at the computer screen and asked me a simple question: “Sir, where is Yoruba?” I had no answer. On the list of sixteen subjects approved by NECO, his language the language of his mother, his market, his music did not exist.
That question has haunted me since. Where is Yoruba? Where is Igbo? Where is Hausa? And more importantly, where is NECO’s conscience? This is not a matter of sixteen subjects or seventy-six subjects. It is a matter of what we have allowed those we trusted with our educational future to turn our country into.
According to NECO’s official registration guideline for 2026 SSCE External, signed by the Registrar, Professor Dantani Ibrahim Wushishi, the examination shall be dual mode, comprising hybrid computer based examination and pen and paper examination in sixteen selected subjects. The sixteen subjects listed are Agricultural Science, Biology, Chemistry, Civic Education, Christian Religious Studies, Commerce, Economics, English Language, Financial Accounting, General Mathematics, Geography, Government, Islamic Studies, Literature-in-English, Marketing and Physics. Read it again. There is no Yoruba. No Igbo. No Hausa. In a country of over two hundred million people where the constitution recognises three major languages, our own examination council has conducted an examination without any of them. This is not a minor administrative adjustment. It is a cultural betrayal with far-reaching consequences.
It would be biased and intellectually dishonest to claim that NECO has done nothing good. Such a claim would be unfair. In the last two years, NECO has shown improvements that deserve commendation. Results are now released faster. In 2025, the council released the SSCE Internal results fifty-two days after the last paper. The pass rate for SSCE External has also improved. In November 2025, NECO announced that over seventy-one per cent of external candidates obtained five credits and above including English and Mathematics. The council is also pushing for technology. The dual-mode computer based and pen and paper approach is meant to curb examination malpractice, which has been the cancer of Nigerian education. For these efforts, NECO deserves commendation. But one good deed does not excuse a fundamental blunder. Good administration cannot replace good policy, and this sixteen-subject policy is a blunder that will cause great havoc to the educational system and to national development.
The first havoc is that it violates the National Policy on Education and the spirit of the Constitution. The National Policy on Education, sixth edition, is clear. Every senior secondary school pupil must offer one Nigerian language. It is not optional. It is compulsory. Section 55 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria recognises Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba alongside English for the business of the National Assembly. The same constitution enjoins the state to promote Nigerian languages. How then does a federal agency, created by an Act of the National Assembly, conduct a Senior School Certificate Examination in 2026 without those same languages? This is not just an oversight. It is policy indiscipline and institutional laxity. The trust the country had in NECO was that it would be the custodian of national learning. You cannot be custodian of learning and delete the language in which learning was first received at home. The country trusted NECO to preserve standards, not to amputate the very identity that standards are meant to serve.
Secondly, you have blocked university admission for thousands of private candidates. Who writes NECO GCE? It is not the elite. It is the second-chance candidate. The young woman who works in a shop in Ibadan and wants to retake two subjects. The okada rider in Kano who failed Mathematics. The apprentice in Aba who wants to enter university. The housewife in Makurdi who wants to better her life. For many of them, their Nigerian language is their saving grace, the subject that gives them their fifth credit. Under the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board admission requirements, to study Yoruba at the University of Ibadan, you need a credit in Yoruba. To study Igbo Linguistics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, you need a credit in Igbo. To study Hausa at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, you need Hausa. To study Education Yoruba, Education Igbo, Law, Linguistics and many Arts courses, a Nigerian language credit is required. If NECO External does not allow registration in Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa, where will these candidates obtain it? WAEC GCE also has limitations. NABTEB does not offer it. You have created a bureaucratic dead end that will keep thousands out of Colleges of Education and universities. This is how we kill the next generation of teachers for our own languages. We complain that our children cannot speak their mother tongue, yet we block the very examination that would qualify those who want to teach it.
The economic and cultural cost is enormous and must not be underestimated. Language is not just culture. It is economy. The Yoruba movie industry, the Igbo film market, the Hausa Kannywood, the music, the content creation industry, all run on these languages and employ millions of Nigerian youths. Nollywood films in indigenous languages are on Netflix and Amazon Prime and earn foreign exchange. UNESCO has repeatedly warned that many Nigerian languages, including Igbo, are endangered and could become extinct in fifty years if deliberate policies are not taken. The Federal Government itself is promoting mother-tongue based education at the primary level. What message is NECO sending? That your mother tongue is good enough to greet your mother at home, but not good enough to be examined at the national level. That to be educated, you must abandon who you are. This is colonial mentality in a post-colonial institution. We are producing coders who can write Python but cannot write a formal letter in Yoruba. We are producing graduates who are fluent in English but illiterate in the language of their own market. No nation develops by despising its own tongue. Japan develops in Japanese. China develops in Chinese. Germany develops in German. Why must Nigeria develop only in English?
The hypocrisy between internal and external candidates exposes the depth of NECO’s failure. For SSCE Internal, that is school candidates, NECO offers about seventy-six subjects. In that list, you will see Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Edo, Efik, Ibibio, Arabic and French. The council has examiners, syllabus, everything for those languages. For SSCE External, that is private candidates, it suddenly says it can only handle sixteen subjects and none of them are Nigerian languages. Are private candidates not Nigerians? Is their Nigerianness of less value? If you have the capacity to examine Yoruba for one point five million internal candidates, why do you not have capacity to examine the same Yoruba for one hundred thousand external candidates? The answer is simple. It is administrative laziness. It is easier to reduce subjects than to build capacity. It is easier to delete than to develop. This is what those we trusted have turned the country into. We trusted NECO to be the guardian of standards. What we now see is an agency that finds it easier to delete subjects than to develop the manpower to set questions and mark them. If you cannot handle Yoruba literature for computer based testing, say it. Do not pretend it does not exist. This is how institutions fail, not with a big bang, but with small, quiet deletions. Power companies that cannot provide light increase tariff. Examination bodies that cannot manage curriculum delete subjects. This is how a nation under-develops.
To avoid bias, I spoke to parents, students and educationists, and their voices strengthen this concern. Mrs Funmilayo Adeyemi, a parent in Oyo State, told me, my daughter wants to study Yoruba Education. She had D7 in Yoruba in WAEC. We wanted to register Yoruba for her in NECO GCE to help her. When we got to the cafe, they said no Yoruba. I had to travel to register WAEC GCE. Why is NECO making life hard for us? Chinedu Okoro, nineteen, a private candidate in Enugu, said, Igbo is my best subject. I made A3 in school. I was sure it would help me get five credits. But in this NECO GCE, they removed it. So I must now struggle with Government and Economics which are not my strength. They removed my advantage. Alhaji Musa Garba, a Hausa Language teacher in Sokoto with fifteen years experience, was bitter. He said, we are the ones NECO calls to moderate Hausa questions. Now they say only sixteen subjects. Is Hausa not important again? Are we no longer in Nigeria? Dr Foluke Adebayo, an educationist and communication scholar, said, this contradicts everything the government says about promoting indigenous languages. You cannot promote mother tongue in basic education and ban it at the SSCE level. It is policy confusion. NECO must reverse it. These are not the voices of troublemakers. They are the voices of the people NECO was established to serve.
The way forward is clear and urgent. NECO should not see this criticism as an attack. It is a call to return to its mandate. First, NECO must immediately restore Nigerian languages, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa, to the 2026 SSCE External list. Even if it makes the list nineteen subjects instead of sixteen, do it. The cost of adding three subjects is nothing compared to the cost of losing a generation of language teachers. Second, the Federal Ministry of Education must summon NECO to explain why there is such discrimination between internal and external candidates. There cannot be two standards for Nigerians. Third, the National Assembly Committee on Basic Education must investigate this decision. The future of Nigerian languages cannot be left to the convenience of an examination timetable. Until these steps are taken, this remains a stain. A council created by the nation to test the nation has decided the nation’s languages are not worth testing. History will record who was silent when our languages were removed from the examination sheet.
Fẹ́mi Akínṣọlá is a public affairs analyst and development writer.
