In April 1999, the General Abdulsalami Abubakar-led military administration established the National Examinations Council (NECO) as an examination body wholly owned by the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The creation of NECO was the climax of a process that spanned over twenty years. Moves and recommendations for the creation of NECO started with the widespread leakage of West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) questions in 1977.

The public outrage that greeted the massive leakage led the Federal Government, under the military administration of General Olusegun Obasanjo, to set up in the same year the Sogbetun Commission of Inquiry to look into the causes of that magnitude of leakage and make appropriate recommendations to Government. The Commission found out that the workload of WAEC was beyond its capacity to conduct hitch-free examinations. The Sogbetun Commission thus recommended that other examination bodies be established so that WAEC would cede part of its workload to such outfits and be left with a more manageable workload.

The recommendations of the Commission were, however, not acted upon. In October 1982, WAEC itself admitted before the House of Representatives Committee on Education that Nigeria needed other examination bodies in order to reduce its (WAEC’s) workload. The Federal Government could not help but respond to the public outcry against its non-implementation of the recommendations of the Sogbetun Commission.

The Angulu Panel was then set up in the same year 1982 by the administration of President Shehu Shagari. The Panel recommended that three regional examination boards, each with a specific mandate, be established. These recommendations were, again, not implemented. As a result of the same problem of inability of WAEC to conduct confidence-inspiring examinations, another panel, headed by Mr. Okoro, was constituted in 1989. This panel’s recommendations were not different from those of its predecessors. When Professor Babs Fafunwa (now Late) became Minister of Education, he set up a Taskforce in 1991 with Professor Osiyale as Chairman, to study the Sogbetun and Angulu Committee reports and make appropriate recommendations to the Federal Government.