BREAKING: Gunmen kill NECO Registrar in Minna

Emmanuel AmudaJune 1, 2021

0 1 minute read

Unknown gunmen suspected to be assassins have killed the Registrar of the National Examinations Council (NECO), Professor Godswill Obioma.

Obioma was killed on Monday night when the hoodlums stormed his Minna residence in the Niger State capital.

Obioma, a professor of educational measurement and evaluation, has just returned to Minna from a trip to Abuja when the suspected assassins allegedly strangled him to death.

The deceased’s widow, Mrs Elizabeth Obioma, told newsmen that “the assassins came in and killed him and left without taking anything.”

Efforts to speak with the Niger State Police Command proved abortive as the police spokesperson neither picked nor returned his calls and text messages as of the time of filing this report.

The 67-year-old indigene of Abia State was appointed NECO Registrar in May 2020.

Obioma joined the list of high-profile Nigerians killed in the last week. Former presidential aide Ahmed Gulak and former Enugu high court judge Stanley Nnaji were murdered in Imo and Enugu states in Southeast Nigeria.

Like Imo State in South-East Nigeria, Niger State in Nigeria’s North-Central has been a hotbed of killings and kidnappings of late as rampaging bandits terrorise the people of the state.

Just on Sunday, about 200 students of an Islamiyya school located at Tegina in the Rafi Local Government Area of Niger State were abducted.

One person was said to have been shot dead while another was critically injured after the gunmen carried out the kidnap operation on Sunday afternoon.

Obioma was appointed NECO registrar on May 14, 2020.

He was a former Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Educational Research and Development Council.

Prof. Obioma has held other key positions in the education sector, among which are: Director, Monitoring, Research and Statistics, National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB); Director Monitoring and Evaluation Universal Basic Education Programme; Director Monitoring and Evaluation National Primary Education Commission and Head, Department of Science, Mathematics and Technology, University of Jos.