Reps’ C’ttee Commends JAMB For Transparency, Wades Into Its Feud With Zenith Bank

The House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education has commended the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for ensuring transparency in all its financial transactions and other activities.

The committee, chaired by Hon. Oforji Oboku, gave the commendation in Abuja at an interactive session with the management of JAMB and representative of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF).

The lawmakers which were presented a 392-page document by JAMB, that contains audited accounts from 2019 to 2022, procurements details, budget performance, evidence of remittances, among others, expressed delight on the level of transparency exhibited by the exam body.

“I must commend the entire management (of JAMB). We know what records said before they assumed office, we know what records is saying now. The transparency efforts of the organisation, the changes we have seen in revenue, the remittances,…. JAMB, we still say kudos to you,” a member of the committee, Sina Oyedeji, said.

The committee, which also received presentation of the Board’s financial records from the AGF’s representative, Anum Lucy, however, set up a “unit committee” to find out reasons for the little discrepancies observed in the financial records presented by JAMB and that of the Accountant General Office.

Responding to some of the issues raised, JAMB registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, likened some of the discrepancies to payments’ charges that were not recorded by the Accountant General Office.

“For example, when we paid N10, we report N10 but the portal through which the payment was made will deduct charges and record the net.

“While we record the gross, they are recording the net and this account for those discrepancies. That is why reconciliation is necessary,” he said.

Oloyede, who said JAMB has been making remittances to Federal Government’s coffers since 2017, revealed that the exam body does not receive allocations for capital projects and overhead from the national budget.

” We don’t collect capital, we don’t collect overhead, if you look at the budgets of other agencies in our category, you will see they collect capital and overhead, but neither of these do we collect, despite that, we make returns from what we collected. Our own IGR is what we spend on capital projects,” he said.

Earlier, in her presentation, the representative of the Accountant General of the Federation, Anum Lucy, said JAMB started its yearly remittances to Federal Government’s account with N7.8 billion in 2017.

She said :”JAMB as an organisation started remitting revenue to the coffers of the Government in 2017, and in that year, they remmitted N7.8 billion to the coffers of government.

“In 2018, it was N5.2 billion. In 2019 it was N3.6 billion. In the year 2020 – N3.8 billion. In 2021 – N3.5 billion and N3.1 billion in 2022.”

Meanwhile, the committee has resolved to invite Zenith Bank Plc over its disagreement with JAMB following a disagreement on their past transactions.

A member of the committee had drawn attention to N497 million said to be indebted to Zenith Bank by JAMB, and the N4.2 billion uncovered by a forensic audit, which the bank supposed to have paid the exam body from sales of registration forms before 2017.

The committee said its intervention on the issue, which is said to be currently handled by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), is to ensure smooth resolution of the conflict.

While passing a motion directing JAMB to submit the forensic audit report on the N4.2 billion owed by the bank, the committee also ordered the exam body to present before it the list of tertiary education institutions that have conducted irregular/illegal admissions across the country as well as its past recruitment list.