Registrar: JAMB Is Neither a Money Making Agency Nor Wasteful One

Against the notion from certain quarters that Joint Admission and Matriculations Board (JAMB) has turned to a ‘money making machine’ for the federal government, Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Is-haq Oloyode, has said the agency was neither set up to generate money for the federal government nor to waste its money.

Oloyode made the declaration on Monday in Benin City, Edo State capital, while briefing journalists on the proposed plan of the body to partner other security agencies in the conduct of their examinations.

He said JAMB under his watch has been able to manage the resources available to it and return the left over to the government that assigned him the responsibility of overseeing the body instead of embarking on wastefulness.

"When you ask me what they were doing with the money before? I was not there. So I am not in position to tell you what they were doing. The one I know is that the government gave me an assignment, I have done it, so the surplus must be returned to the owner of it. That is what I know.

"So, some persons are raising question whether we are money generating? My answer is: are we money wasting? Do you get the point? Must we steal the money simply because the money was there? So, at time, I do not understand the logic of some persons. They preferred that the money is generated and wasted.

"The first thing we did when we came in was that the government should not give us capital vote again. They used to collect capital vote and overhead  from government but we stopped it.

"Just fund yourselves except for salaries, and we will be happy if government even stopped the salaries. Except for salaries, for the last two years, we have stopped capital and overhead because we believed we do not need them.

"And if after spending of capital and overhead, we still have surplus of billions, do people want us to waste the billions or to steal it? So that is why I am surprised that people are making a noise that we are generating money. If you say we are increasing the charges, I can understand but not otherwise," he said.

The Registrar also refuted the claim that their examination questions are usually hacked into by some unscrupulous elements before the examination proper, adding that anyone with such proof can come forth and say it before the public as the agency usually think ahead of those who think they can outsmart it.

"As far as JAMB is concerned, I have not found any case of a breakthrough. No matter how clever they think they are, we are ahead of them. One of the reasons why I led a delegation is to see whether there is any evidence of break in. You can ask any of the security agencies handling the matter, they will tell you.

"We have not been able to find one case of success. What we are treating are attempts. And because we are proactive that we are picking their attempt when people try to break into our BVN, they did not get any questions because our questions were not there. They were able to break into a decoy that we created and they were not able to do anything,” he disclosed.