Two top management staff of the National Examination Council (NECO) have allegedly been fingered in a N400 million fraud.
This is coming barely six months after its Registrar and Chief Executive, Professor Charles Uwakwe and three other management staff were suspended from office.
It was gathered that the two top management staff have been suspended in connection with the fraud as more are expected to follow suit.
It was reliably gathered that one of the management staff involved in the latest fraud is a state officer in one of the Northern states of Nigeria, but the fraud was said to have been committed while he was in charge of a state in the South Western part of Nigeria.
The officer in question was said to have misappropriated not less than N400 million said to be proceeds from the sales of examination scratch cards.
In the petition which led to the discovery of the fraud, the petitioner alleged that nearly 40,000 scratch cards were supplied to the state office and were sold but the said money was not remitted to NECO account.
The officer in charge of the state office was reported to have in a reply to a query over the non remittance of the money, claimed that the scratch cards were stolen but failed to report the theft to either the management or ICT department so that the cards would be rendered useless.
It was further gathered that the officer was transferred out of the state in the South West to his present station in the North West zone of the country.
Further findings revealed that when the new board of the organization was constituted, the issue was again reopened, resulting in the indictment of a director in the headquarters and the said state officer.
All attempt to reach the acting Registrar/Chief Executive Officer of NECO, Alhaji Abubakar Gana, for the clarification of the story proved abortive just as the Director of Communication of the organization, Mallam Azzez Sani, was said to have travelled out for the ongoing accreditation exercise of schools.
