On Oloyede’s efforts at JAMB

March 12, 2018

JAMB PROFESSOR Ishaq Oloyede is a retired Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin. He is the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Nigeria and the incumbent Registrar of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), he assumed office on August 1, 2016. In barely 18 months of his appointment, the board has recorded the feat that was never attained in the history of the board. In 2017, the board remitted a whooping sum of seven billion eight hundred thousand naira (N7.8 billion) to Federal Government coffers. The professor confirmed this while disputing the figure of N5.2 billion. The board was said to have remitted about fifty-one million naira (N51 million) between 2010 and 2016. We must ask why?

We commend Oloyede especially during this period of avarice when even cleaners in government offices own filling stations and other big business. The feat recorded by Ishaq Oloyede is a tacit indictment of the previous management in that organisation. Revelations after an audit team verified JAMB records attest to the fact that state officers of JAMB fed fat on the board. The implication is that our commonwealth was cornered by the larcenous few. It is rather funny to hear that “a magical snake” swallowed N36 million in the Benue State office of the board. Alarming tales of missing money in many state offices of the board keep mouths wagging.

The audit panel has submitted its report to the Federal Ministry of Education where action is to be taken. The nation still awaits the action to be taken. Nigerians are interested in the matter; when a knave is not punished, an honest man is laughed at.

The administrative dexterity of Oloyede has blocked the crevice through which the country’s revenue was being siphoned. Professor Ishaq Oloyede is my man-of-the-year 2017.