In line with the extant government’s directive which was reiterated recently by the Director of Budget Office, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) will continue its practice of remitting the constitutionally-mandated proportion of its operational surpluses to federal government coffers.
This was disclosed by JAMB’s head of publicity and protocol, Dr Fabian
Benjamin, Monday in a statement.
He said JAMB is working with the directive that all unutilised funds
by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) be returned to the
public treasury.
“The board and public-spirited Nigerians are at a loss as to the reason for the various campaigns of calumny being mounted by some
individuals who feel that these remittances should not be made.
“The Board reiterates that it is not within the powers of MDAs to determine the uses for which the remitted funds are put to. Theirs is
to comply with extant directive while those given the mandate to manage the national treasury have the responsibility of appropriating and channeling such remittances, in the overall interest of the public, to identified areas of need or rather whichever area of the national economy that they perceive to be in most need of resources,”
Benjamin said.
He added that it is the novelty of such remittances that is jolting the board’s critics from their complacency.
“It would be recalled that the humongous remittances are the first in the history of the four-decade-old agency. The first landmark remittance was made in 2017, and the feat was repeated in subsequent years in line with its belief that rules are made to be obeyed and, at any rate, the Board does not believe it should hold onto money that does not belong to it,” he said.
According to the statement, the remittances are possible due to the
decision of the Federal Government to reduce the cost of the purchase
of the e-pin from N5000 to N3500, which is the cheapest globally.
The statement further noted that never in the history of tertiary
institutions in Nigeria have the institutions benefited from the board’s operations as they now do. For instance, “a huge chunk of these surpluses are ploughed back to the tertiary institutions through the National Tertiary Admissions Performance Merit Award and other platforms.”
He disclosed that the intellectual communities, the civil society
groups, among others, have all been included in the management of the
board’s operational processes, not only to add value to its service
delivery, but also to make for inclusiveness.
“All these, which were hitherto impossible, had been made possible as
a result of the prudent management of resources which has enabled the
Board to prosecute these aspirations.
“The Board maintains that the cost of obtaining the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) or the Direct Entry (DE) e-pin today
is the lowest globally. This comparison is not even with developed countries but rather with countries with less per capital income than Nigeria.
“In as much as the Board is desirous of charging rock-bottom prices
for its services, it is also mindful of the fact that a non-existent
fee regime would only give room for abuses and confusion as
unscrupulous or other unserious elements who had ulterior motives for
obtaining the forms would want to obtain them to explore opportunities
for prosecuting unacceptable acts were they to cost almost nothing.”
Dr Benjamin therefore, appealed to Nigerians to be mindful of
impostors parading themselves as educational experts with ulterior
motive of propagating falsehood to prosecute their mischievous ends.
