NECO Confirms Kano as Top-Performing State in 2025 Exams, Refutes Abia Ranking

The National Examinations Council (NECO) has reaffirmed Kano State as the top-performing state in the Federation for the 2025 Council Examinations, with 5.886% of candidates—39,351 students—achieving five credits and above in both Mathematics and English.

This clarification comes after a newspaper report mistakenly named Abia State as the best-performing state, basing its claim on Abia’s state code number 001 rather than official performance data. NECO described the report as misleading and incorrect.

The newspaper claimed Kano candidates scored between 50-16%, suggesting failure, since only 49.84% of Kano’s 136,762 candidates scored at least five credits including Mathematics and English.

NECO explained that the report was only an informal analysis by state and not the official ranking. The official ranking placed Kano, with its state code 015, first, while Abia, with code 001, ranked 35th nationally.

According to NECO’s data, Lagos led the male candidate performance rankings nationally, with 4.44% (30,203) of 43,538 registered candidates achieving five credits and above in Mathematics and English. Kano’s male candidates scored 4.10% (28,308 out of 62,223 registered).

In female candidate rankings, Kano was first with 5.02%, followed by Lagos with 4.93%.

A NECO official urged the media to avoid misleading the public on important education matters.

Hajiya Rabi Inuwa, Director of the Kano Educational Resource Centre (KERD), noted that Governor Yusuf had already paid over N3 billion in examination fees before the exams began. NECO also appealed for settlement of outstanding examination fees from 2022 to date, totaling N475 million.