Revisiting JAMB’s exemplary leadership

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board was established in 1978 by the military government of General Olusegun Obasanjo. According to the information gleaned from its website, the Board among other things was empowered to: conduct matriculation examination for entry into all universities, polytechnics and colleges of education (by whatever name called) in Nigeria. It also has the power to appoint examiners, moderators, invigilators, members of the subject panels and committees and other persons with respect to matriculation examinations and any other matters incidental.

JAMB also has the mandate to place suitably qualified candidates in the tertiary institutions after having taken into account the following:  the vacancies available in each tertiary institution; the guidelines approved for each tertiary institution by its proprietors or other competent authorities;  the preference expressed or otherwise indicated by the candidates for certain tertiary institutions and courses and such other matters as the Board may be directed by the Honourable Minister  for Education to consider or the Board itself may consider appropriate in the circumstances. The examination body also collate and disseminate information on all matters relating to admissions into tertiary institutions or any other matter relevant to the discharge of functions of the board.

Over time, the Board has introduced a number of reforms in its programmes of action. It has ceased to use analogue examination system of shading answers with pencils to what is now known as the Computer Based Examination popularly known as CBT. Given the huge number of candidates seeking placement into the tertiary institutions every year, the board of the examination body has had to accredit private organisations as examination centres. Also, the order of questions has been rearranged such that copying one another is a recipe for failure as someone’s number one question could be the question 10 of the person seated next to them.

There is no gainsaying that JAMB has introduced technology into its operations in order to make them seamless and efficient. For instance, the Board, apart from discarding optical mark recognition pencil-based exam for the computer based one, it has also introduced biometric registration and verification of candidates taking its examination. This has eliminated impersonation and examination fraud. Registration for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination is done through purchase of e-PIN, checking of the result is online while printing of admission letter is also online.

 It is noteworthy that Closed Circuit Television monitors have also been deployed into all its examination centres. The use of technology has also made the marking, computation of scores and release of its result very fast. The results are released in about 24 hours now.

Thus, the 42-year-old institution has been able to largely shed off the opprobrium of the past where examination question leakage, exam malpractices particularly at notorious centres known as “Miracle Centres” as well as haphazard and opaque admission process were the norm. Under the Central Admission Processing System introduced by the current leadership of JAMB, no candidate is allowed to have more than one admission in an academic year.

While all the aforementioned innovations have brought credibility to examinations conducted by the Board, none has attracted as much applause as the anti-corruption stance of the current leadership of the examination body under Prof. Ishaq Oloyede who happens to be a former Vice Chancellor of University of Ilorin. The professor of Islamic Studies was appointed in August 2016. No one knew there’s a lot of slush funds in JAMB until the story broke out during a probe initiated by the current Registrar in which a member of staff of the Board in Makurdi, Benue State, Philomina Chieshe, alleged that snake swallowed N36m, being proceeds of scratch cards  sold to applicants. Several other frauds were uncovered.

Apart from that, several billions of naira had been remitted by the leadership of Oloyede to the Federal Government coffers. This was strange and unprecedented.  According to a report by Premium Times of October 2, 2017, the total amount the JAMB remitted to the Federal Government coffers between 2010 and 2016 was a paltry N50,752,544.  This is about one per cent of the N5ýbn the agency remitted in 2017 alone. It was reported that the  seemingly ridiculous nature of the remittances before the appointment of Oloyede in 2016 led to the Federal Government mandating the investigation of previous heads of JAMB. The Federal Executive Council, in September 2018 ordered a probe into the administration of the past heads of JAMB.

This newspaper in its July 23, 2018 edition reported that JAMB issued a statement to the effect that it remitted N7.8bn revenue it generated from the 2018 UTME to the coffers of the Federal Government. However, the Federal Government returned about N2bn to the board to use for capital projects, since no money had been given for such. In its May 13, 2019 edition, this newspaper also quoted JAMB Head of Media and Information, Fabian Benjamin, as saying that the Board remitted N5bn in 2019. He said: “The board returned N5 billion to the Federal Government, but out of that amount, the board was given N2 billion to further enhance its operations”. And just last Sunday, May 3, 2020, JAMB issued a press release that it had remitted a total of N3.5bn to the Federal Government’s coffers.

The Board’s Head of Media and Information said that it had made an interim remittance of N3.5 billion to the Federal Government’s consolidated account for the 2020 expected remittance.  It claimed that it had earlier made a payment of over N3.5 billion to candidates by way of reduction of N1,500 from the cost of each ePIN sold to them as directed by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), bringing the total remittances this year to over N7 billion. In total, between 2017 and 2020, JAMB has remitted over N20bn. This is praiseworthy!

It would seem that the probe initiated by the Federal Government has indicted the immediate past Registrar of the Board, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde. According to Premium Times of April 27, 2020, the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission better known as ICPC, the anti-graft agency has been able to secure an interim forfeiture of some immovable assets of the former registrar ranging from houses, filling stations, and schools. Though Ojerinde is presumed innocent until found guilty by a competent court of law, his ordeal in the hands of the anti-corruption agency shows that accountability can still be demanded of any public servants even after his tenure in office.

While I commend Oloyede for his exemplary leadership at JAMB, I am also tempted to say that it is obvious that the candidates who annually sit for the UTME are being overcharged for the exam. The Board used to charge N5,000 before the presidential order to reduce the cost by N1,500 last year. If in spite of that, after deductions of all operational and overhead costs, the Board can still remit N3.5bn, then the actual cost of the examination should have been about N2,000 instead of N3,500. Examination bodies in Nigeria are not supposed to be revenue generating agencies in the mould of the Nigeria Customs Service, National Communications Commission and many others. I hereby submit that JAMB should further reduce the cost of the examination.

The Governing Board under Dr. Emmanuel Ndukwe, management and staff of JAMB deserve commendation for the support given to Oloyede. The same way, the Boards and management who served under previous registrars have a case to answer about the use of the funds generated by the Board as well as those received from the Federal Government. I also wonder why the leadership of other examination bodies such as the West African Examination Council and National Examination Council have not been able to declare excess revenue as being declared by JAMB.

On a final note, Oloyede and his team should not rest on their oars. A lot needs to be done to weed out the examination malpractices syndicates, admission racketeers and saboteurs within the system. In addition, the board should see to it that the candidates’ complaints are promptly attended to.