By Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN
Very recently, the iconic Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, appeared before the National Assembly to defend the budget of the agency. A lot of revelations came out of that session, especially from the presentation made by the Comrade Senator, Adams Oshiomhole, concerning the 2024 expenditures of JAMB.
The allegations revealed by Comrade Oshiomole suggest a lot of atrocities against the agency under Professor Oloyede, such as abuse of power, misappropriation, breach of regulations, profligacy and excessive pampering of members of staff, all at the expense of poor Nigerians. There is also the issue of waste arising from dual sources of funding. While the federal government allocates funds to run JAMB as an agency of government, JAMB still prides itself as a revenue-generating institution, by charging candidates and their parents exorbitant fees for the examinations conducted for admission. Education is classified by many nations as an essential service primarily because of its importance to social development, being the basic foundation for human knowledge. How an agency connected with facilitating knowledge transformed itself into another federal revenue platform cannot cease to amaze me. Let us now consider the details of the allegations against JAMB under Professor Oloyede as monitored in the media.
“The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has stated that it spent N1.1billion on meals and refreshments, and another N850 Million on security, cleaning, and fumigation in 2024. The JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, had made the disclosures while defending the agency’s 2025 budget proposal before the National Assembly Joint Committee on Finance. Oloyede revealed that in 2024, JAMB remitted N4billion to the Consolidated Revenue Fund and received a N6billion grant from the Nigerian government.
This did not sit well with the committee, which questioned why a self-funding agency like JAMB was still receiving government funding. Abiodun Faleke, the Chairman of the House Committee on Finance, raised concerns, asking, “You remitted N4 Billion and got N6 Billion from the Federal Government. Why not keep the N4 Billion and we stop the government from funding JAMB?” Senator Adams Oshiomhole also criticized the agency’s expenditure, questioning, “You spent N1.1billion on meals and refreshments.
“Are you being freely fed by the government? What this means is that you are spending the money you generate from poor students; many of them orphans. Oshiomhole further queried JAMB’s N850 Million spending on security, cleaning, and fumigation, asking, “What did you fumigate? Is it mosquitoes that took all this money?” He also condemned the 600 Million spent on local travel and pressed Oloyede to justify the N6.5 billion allocated for local training.”
Although the National Assembly Joint Committee on Finance would later issue a statement purporting to absolve the JAMB Registrar, that has not doused the fire of controversy that these revelations have generated. Speaking for myself personally, I do not see the need for a central agency in a Federation to coordinate admission into higher institutions, including those established by States, individuals and organisations. It defeats the concept of federalism when schools have to queue for one single agency to approve candidates for admission. We can set standards or guidelines to be followed in order to achieve some equilibrium but it is totally anachronistic to stifle the autonomy of institutions that have not been established or funded by the federal government. Many parents have been thrown into perpetual agony every year, due to the inability of their wards to secure admission into any tertiary institution, such that there are youths in Nigeria who have been on the JAMB radar for over five years, waiting for their letters of admission from the ‘almighty JAMB’, as it is now known. The JAMB Act was enacted to commence on December 7, 1989, with a mandate for the agency to perform the following functions, under and by virtue of section 5 (1) (a) – (c) and (2) thereof:
5. (1) Notwithstanding the provisions of any other enactment, the Board shall be responsible for –
(a) the general control of the conduct of matriculation examinations for admissions into all Universities, Polytechnics (by whatever name called) and Colleges of Education (by whatever name called) in Nigeria;
©️ the placement of suitably qualified candidates in collaboration with the tertiary institutions after taking into account –
(i) the vacancies available in each tertiary institution;
(ii) the guidelines approved for each tertiary institution by its proprietor or other competent authority;
(iii) the preferences expressed or otherwise indicated by candidates for certain tertiary institutions and course; and
(iv) such other matters as the Board may be directed by the Minister to consider, or the Board itself may consider appropriate in the circumstances.
(2) For the avoidance of doubt, the Board shall be responsible for determining matriculation requirements and conducting examinations leading to undergraduate admissions and also for admissions to National Diploma and Nigerian Certificate in Education courses, but shall not be responsible for examinations or any other selective processes for postgraduate courses and any other courses offered by the tertiary institutions.”
What section 5 of the JAMB Act reproduced above has done is to place the destinies of candidates in the hands of a government bureaucracy, which partly accounts for the number of youths trooping out of Nigeria for greener pastures. By including the phrase “by whatever name called” in the reference to tertiary institutions covered by JAMB, it means even universities and polytechnics established and funded by States and private entities have to go through JAMB for admission, through such mysterious criteria like federal character, educationally disadvantaged States, catchment areas, etc. Paragraphs 27-30 of the Part 2 of the Third Schedule to the 1999 Constitution place matters of university, technological or professional education on the Concurrent Legislative List, with power granted to the States to legislate thereon. So, the issue is why JAMB has become the only institution regulating admission into tertiary institutions.
Section 10 of the Act deals with the fund of the Board of JAMB as follows:
“16. The Board shall establish and maintain a fund which shall consist of –
(a) such sums as may be provided by the Federal Government for the running expenses of the Board; and
(b) such other sums as may be collected or received by the Board from other sources either in the execution of its functions or in respect of any property vested in the Board or otherwise howsoever.”
From the above, it is clear that the primary source of funding for JAMB activities and the discharge of its functions is through government subvention and not to milk hapless candidates and their distressed parents. In reports monitored in the media, JAMB has however turned the establishment Act on its head and transmitted itself into a cash cow for the government. From all the above, the National Assembly was right in seeking to return JAMB to its original mandate. For clarity, the Act setting up JAMB does not confer on it the power to raise funds for the government, as it is not an agency of government set up to generate revenue but rather to co-ordinate admissions into tertiary institutions. If this can be done free of charge to the candidates who are mostly teenagers, the better for us all, rather than focusing on how much is to be declared in financial terms every year. Section 10 (a) of the JAMB Act states clearly that the Board is to “establish and MAINTAIN a fund”, which connotes a permanent and operational fund, not to be transferred or remitted. According to the learned authors of Merriam-Webster online dictionary, to maintain is “to keep in an existing state, preserve from decline”, such that if JAMB has reached a stage that it has funds in excess after the discharge of its functions, then it should declare its examinations free for a particular period of time until the fund is exhausted to entitle it to charge fresh fees. We cannot have an institution set up mainly to assist young people to activate their careers that will turn itself into a money-spinning entity that now builds houses for its staff on the sweat of the poor masses. It is totally unfair.
Nigeria is a member of the United Nations, which has established the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), primarily to promote education for all, with a mandate to lead the Global Education 2030 Agenda through Sustainable Development Goal 4. It is prescribed by the UN that all member States shall make reasonable efforts to allocate not less than 26% of their annual budget to education. This is so because the UN and indeed all of humanity now consider education as a human right. This stems from several declarations and conventions, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which recognizes the right to free, compulsory primary education for all, an obligation to develop secondary education accessible for all and an obligation to develop equitable access to higher education, by the progressive introduction of free higher education, as encapsulated in Article 26 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and replicated in Articles 13 and 14 of International Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights. Nigeria also made a feeble adoption of these goals in section 18 of its Constitution. Professor Olorode owes Nigerians a sacred obligation not to transfer this legacy of JAMB as a revenue institution to his successor. If it has become difficult for the federal government to fund an agency that works to defeat the concept of federalism, the reasonable thing to do is to scrap JAMB and allow all higher institutions the liberty to determine their admission policies based on their capacities.
