The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said it has remitted N50billion to the Federal Government’s coffers in the last six years.
The examination body also said it expended N500m as Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) in support of Nigerian universities to increase their capacity to give admission to applicants every year in the last five years.
The JAMB Registrar Prof. Ishaq Oloyede made these known in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, while delivering a special public lecture titled: “The imperatives of JAMB in tertiary education in Nigeria.
”He said: “The recent strategic and structural innovations in JAMB have resulted in significant impacts on the Board in areas such as cost control, prevention of financial leakages and minimisation of financial corruption. This has changed the narratives such that JAMB now posts humongous returns to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF). The Board also expanded internal capacities for its operations with direct execution of processes and procedures.
“Currently, over N50billion has been recorded as surplus in the past five years. Over N29billion of this has been returned directly to the CRF. About N11billion disbursed on capital projects, Corporate Social Responsibility, savings (about N6billion) and others in contrasts to about N52million that had been the cumulative return of the previous 40 years.”
Oloyede cited these as some of the reasons to justify the importance of JAMB, including its primary function of conducting examinations for applicants seeking admission to tertiary institution to ensure fairness, national unity and merit in the process.
He berated those calling for an extension of validity of results of Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations(UTME) of candidates, saying those behind the calls are acting in ignorance.
The JAMB registrar explained that score that is good enough for a year may never be good enough for any subsequent year with more brilliant candidates; owing to the limited carrying capacity, stressing that increasing the validity period will further compound the huge backlog of untreated admission requests and subscriptions to various institutions in the country.
