By Ngozi Nwankwo
The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, Professor Ishaq Oloyede has expressed concerns over the misrepresentation of figures in the 2025 budget proposal presented to the National Assembly Joint Committee on Finance on Monday.
Fielding questions from newsmen on a sideline of an event in Abuja on Tuesday, Oloyede dismissed reports making rounds that the Board spent huge amounts on fumigation, meals, among other items in 2024, describing them as misrepresentations.
Oloyede stated that the Board’s total expenditure for fumigation across all states in 2024 was less than N1 million.
“I want to say emphatically, without any iota of doubt, that I never presented any budget performance of 2024 before the National Assembly yesterday. I think it’s a lot of misunderstanding.
“I did not talk about the 2024 budget performance. And we did not spend any humongous money in 2024. Indeed, what we spent on fumigation in the whole state of the Federation all offices in 2024, not up to one million naira. And what we budgeted for 2025 for fumigation is less than two million,” he said.
Oloyede explained that misunderstandings arose because the detailed breakdown of the budget proposal was not fully reviewed during the presentation.
“On the succeeding page, we provided the breakdown with asterisks to call attention to it, but we did not go and read the other pages where we analyzed what we were doing,” he noted.
On the N6.5 billion allegedly spent on training in 2024, Oloyede said the money is just a proposal for 2025 that cut across various budget lines, including monitoring of examination, admission expenses, e-facilities payment, awards for best higher education institutions, among others.
“We have 10,500 examiners and invigilators going to conduct both the mock and the UTME.
Some of them stay for 10 days. I do not determine their DTA. It’s the government that determines the DTA to be paid to them, so what offence have I committed in putting their claims together?” he queried.
On the alleged huge amount spent on meal, Oloyede said : “Everybody knows that at the JAMB headquarters, we provide one lunch for those in the headquarters. And we provide this lunch for them, partly because we don’t want our system to be destroyed…
“Apart from the fact that there are security reasons for not allowing people going in and coming out.
“You also know that we have some ICT infrastructure that will be damaged if we allow people to bring food and remnants.
“So we created the canteen and we provide for them. And for 2024, it’s just only for those 5,000. And others have become agitated. So we are now saying for 2025, we should provide for 2,300. 2,300 times 22 days, times 12 months, what will it be if not over N1 billion”, he added.
