TRACKED FOR LIFE: FG Scraps Common Entrance, Unleashes Digital LIN on 1.9m Students!
ABUJA, Nigeria — In a massive shake-up of the country’s basic education system, the Federal Government has officially moved to scrap the decades-old National Common Entrance Examination. In its place, the Ministry of Education has launched a sweeping digital surveillance and tracking tool: the Learner Identification Number (LIN).
Designed to assign a permanent, traceable academic identity to every Nigerian child, the policy has officially kicked off with over 1.9 million candidates sitting for the 2026 WAEC and NECO examinations already tagged with the new digital IDs.
By permanently linking a verified digital identity to every learner, the Ministry of Education aims to eradicate the lucrative “miracle centre” industry. Impersonators writing exams for registered candidates will now face a biometric and digital wall, safeguarding the integrity of future WAEC, NECO, and JAMB examinations.
The 20 Million ‘Missing’ Pupil Mystery
The aggressive rollout of the LIN system is directly tied to a staggering statistical black hole within the public education sector.
Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, dropped a bombshell during a recent media interactive session in Lagos, revealing a massive transition crisis between primary and junior secondary levels.
The Numbers: While Nigeria boasts over 23 million pupils across 50,000 public primary schools, only a little over 3 million transition to public junior secondary schools.
The Missing Millions: “Where are the about 20 million not enrolled in our public secondary schools?” Alausa questioned.
The Solution: The LIN will track students from Primary One right through to their careers, ensuring authorities can instantly identify dropouts, monitor attendance, and halt the massive leakage of human capital.
The Death of the Common Entrance Exam
For generations, the high-stakes National Common Entrance Examination dictated a child’s transition to secondary school. That era is now over.
The Federal Government is replacing the one-off test with a Continuous Assessment (CA) model.
How It Works: A pupil’s academic performance will be cumulatively tracked from Primary One using their unique LIN.
Seamless Transfers: Even if a student changes schools or relocates to another state, their digital academic footprint follows them, completely eliminating the ability to forge records or easily drop off the grid.
From Ogun State Blueprint to National Law
Investigative checks reveal that the LIN is not a completely new experiment. The framework originally started five years ago as a state-level innovation in Ogun State under Governor Dapo Abiodun.
Recognizing its success in eliminating duplicate records and tracking student mobility, the Federal Government has now scaled the Ogun blueprint into a national mandate. The LIN is now fully integrated with the Digitized National Education Management Information System (DNEMIS), which has already assigned unique ten-digit identification numbers to every verified school in Nigeria.
Breaking the Examination Fraud Syndicate
Beyond monitoring dropouts, the LIN serves a secondary, more punitive purpose: smashing examination malpractice.