No, FG has not released cut off mark for unity schools

Claim: Some websites claim that the national cut-off mark for admission into the nation’s unity colleges has been pegged at 142.

Findings show that the information published on these websites, servantboy.com, schoolings.org, and caterandmergerconsult.com,  which is being circulated on various social media platforms, including WhatsApp, is false as the National Examination Council NECO is yet to release the results.

Full Text

Unity Colleges were established by the Federal Government to foster National Unity and cohesion by bringing pupils from different parts of the country together in a school. There are 110 Unity Secondary Schools across the country.

For primary school pupils who would like to transit to one of the 110 federal Unity colleges across the country, sitting for the National Common entrance examination is mandatory.

Recently, a website servantboy.com released names of those it claimed got the highest score in the examination conducted on the 5th of June 2021 while claiming a new cut off mark of 142 had been set 

“The national cut-off marks for 2020/2021 has been peg at 142,” the website claims.

This report is being shared on various social media platforms and websites.

One website, cater and merger consult shared a  similar story   that 142 is the new cut off mark.  shoolings.org published the same .

Verification

Radio Nigeria visited the National Examination Council (NECO)’s website which is the examination body in Nigeria that conducts the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination, the General Certificate in Education in June/July and November/December respectively, and the National common entrance examination.

According to NECO the 2021 National common entrance examination was written on the 5th of June 2021 with 76,855 students in 417 centres across the country comprising 37,300 males and 39,555 females.

Lagos had the highest registration of 21,423, FCT followed with 8,674, Anambra with 5,730 candidates, and Zamfara with 4,855 candidates.

To verify the claim, Radio Nigeria contacted the Head of Information, NECO, and he confirmed that the result is not out yet neither has the cut-off mark been pegged at 142.

‘’It’s completely fake…It’s fake, you know we have just concluded the marking, normally the process is after marking we submit to the federal ministry of education, the ministry will now release the result officially then they will now be the one to the fix cut-off mark. It’s not NECO’s responsibility to fix cut-off mark, ours is just to conduct the exam, mark, and submit to the ministry which we have not even done. So I don’t even know where they got that information,’’ he said.

Mr Azeez said the result is usually presented to the Federal Ministry of Education before it is released to the public and the ministry is responsible for pegging the National Cut off Mark.

Students are expected to download their results from the official website of NECO, however, a further check on the website also revealed that the 2021 national common entrance examination result is yet to be uploaded which indicates that the result is not yet out.

Also, further checks on the website of the Federal Ministry of Education show that the 2021 cut mark has not been published. 

Conclusion   

Findings show that the cut-off mark for unity colleges has not been pegged at 142 as the examination result is not yet out therefore, the public should disregard the information published by the websites.

The researcher produced this fact-check per the Dubawa 2021 Kwame KariKari Fellowship partnership with FRCN to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.