Snake swallowing JAMB’s N36m unrealistic – Registrar

The board had remitted at least N3 million to the treasury annually prior to 2016, but when you took charge, about N7.8 billion was submitted in 2017. What kind of magic do you have?  It ‎is just that we followed normal procedure. We tried to cut costs to ensure protection of the revenue so that […]

The board had remitted at least N3 million to the treasury annually prior to 2016, but when you took charge, about N7.8 billion was submitted in 2017. What kind of magic do you have? 

It ‎is just that we followed normal procedure. We tried to cut costs to ensure protection of the revenue so that there will be no leakages. We tried to internalise what we are doing rather than giving jobs out as contracts, and you will notice that there are no contractors here because there is no job to be contracted out. 

So, for me, it is just doing things properly. If we returned N7.8bn is because Nigeria has put in place a process whereby when you do things rightly, the result will be better. 

Where you able to look into why only small amounts of money were returned to the treasury in the past?

I am not an auditor and the president did not give me the mandate of probing what had happened before I came. He said “your appointment starts with immediate effect.” So, what happened before I came is definitely out of my mandate, and if in the process of running the organisation something comes as an obstacle; for instance the issue on the ban of scratch cards. I had the fortune and misfortune of being the one to stop the sale of scratch cards to candidates, and if I did not ask those who were selling it to account for the money they made, I wouldn’t have known what had happened and those who accounted for the money. I had nothing to do with them. You can’t blame my predecessor. And if in the process, they  could not account for the money, and want to mystify what is ordinarily a mundane matter, then that person would have himself to blame. I am not an auditor and I am not interested in probing anybody and I do not think my mandate includes probing my predecessor. 

One official who could not account for some money claimed that a strange snake swallowed N36 million realised from the cards: is that real?

I don’t think it’s real because people joke with very serious matters.  Somebody said he dropped from heaven; he has no father and mother, you cannot be making jokes with those issues. No sane person will believe what is not real. As far as I am concerned, the issue of the snake is an alibi that somebody created and because there are so many snakes everywhere that is why people are joking with serious issues. This is something that has accumulated for almost five, six, seven years and if we haven’t stopped it, it would have continued because by the time you are selling for this year, you are using the money to settle that of last year and nobody will know.

There were incidences of cheating in exams last year; what were the most frequent cases?

‎Many of the malpractices are related to either the Internet or the Computer-Based Test (CBT) centre owners. There are also the ‘centres’ that conduct tutorials for candidates which claim that anybody that attends the tutorials will get 300 marks. 

So, they were looking for any means legitimate and illegitimate; including blackmail, to get what they did not deserve. Unfortunately, there are some decent people among them and they are not making noise. The Quran asks people to be conscious of creating commotion because the result of commotion may not be limited to those who caused the original commotion. They are causing trouble for innocent CBT owners and the earlier we speak out, the better, because if we do not, they will rubbish all of us. 

Striking members of the non-teaching unions in universities were said to have disrupted the conduct of the mock UTME in some universities. Do they pose a problem to the main UTME?

I do not think so; I have done the needful and it’s unfortunate some people want to go that way in just two institutions. Assuming all the institutions owned by the Federal Government decide to go that way, we will still conduct our examinations. But what we have decided is that any CBT centre, for ‎ whatever reason; that is unable to conduct the mock cannot be used for our examination because we cannot bring them into our own network without test. And we are not prepared to test any system after the mock. 

You prohibited several items in the exam centres: why?

We banned additional items like wrist watches, intelligent jewelry, recording devices, pens and any type of lens‎ because we have been able to discover through a review of what happened at the last examination, what people were doing with those devices to cheat in exams. And as according to Achebe, “Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without missing, he has learned to fly without perching” we will not rest too in our effort.

You also stopped candidates from carrying mobile phones to exam centres and you sometimes rescheduled time and centres. How do you expect the candidates to know?

Like the problem we had in OAU, Ile-Ife, in which striking unions disrupted the mock; we have told the candidates that we had their registered telephone numbers, email addresses and profiles. Through this, once there is a problem, we just reschedule them by sending another register to a new place and we move them and they are automatically notified. That is why we advised the candidates not to panic. For instance, as we are writing the mock, we put 13 centres on standby and we paid them because we envisaged problems. Even in places where we do not envisage any problem, we have option B and by 4pm or 5pm all candidates would have taken their exams. 

You disallowed cash transactions at your centres but candidates paid N700 each to the CBT centres directly for the mock. Don’t you think that some people will extort money from candidates?

Cash transaction was stopped in institutions owned by government, particularly CBT centres owned by JAMB. We cannot legislate for private centres. We are just assisting them, but if the CBT owner wants to collect cash, why not? When we realised that the N700 we were going to collect was not up to what we were going to spend in the collection we made it free. That in all centres owned by JAMB, nobody pays a kobo is because we want to protect our cash transaction policy and we do not want candidates to go to bank and pay N700 and come back and start the exams. 

Reports making the round say you cannot be bought. What effort are you doing to make JAMB a corrupt-free institution? 

JAMB has always been strong; there might be mistakes here and there. Corruption is not limited to Nigeria, not to talk of JAMB. It depends on the system, if the system does not provide fertile ground for it, I think it is very difficult for corruption to take place. But a situation where a system is not well built, even a saint will become corrupt in the process of running such establishment. Since we are not an island, whatever is going on in JAMB cannot be divorced from the larger society and we want to sanitise the system and if everybody decide to clean their own part of the table, I believe the table will be clean. 

JAMB is celebrating 40th anniversary. Are you planning to take innovative ways in service delivery?

We are doing that every year. What we did 40 years ago was different from what we did 30 years ago and what we did in 2017 is not what we are doing in 2018. Candidates generate registration codes from their houses. I believe that we are improving by the day and we will continue. 

An inconsistent academic calendar is one of the challenges in admissions globally. Is there any effort to stabilise the calendar? 

Even next week, I will be holding a meeting with heads of institutions and we will continue to synergise to ensure that we do not have disruption of academic calendar. 

Last week, we had a meeting with WAEC, NECO and NABTEB on having a smooth calendar and if one person decides to derail the calendar almost everything will be completely derailed. 

Therefore, we appeal to our colleagues in the education sector not to allow our disagreements to affect innocent students. Those who are aspiring to acquire higher education should not be barred from doing so. I believe that there should be a mechanism for resolving dispute rather than immediate rush to strike.

Malpractice exists both at the stages of registration and examination, but it seems the board pays more attention to registration this year. Why?

The reason why we put more energy on registration is that we have discovered that a lot of examination malpractices have their foundation laid during registration and by the time it gets to the examination hall, 8o per cent of the malpractice would have been perfected. That was why we monitored the registration and arrested a number of people. 

In the past, most of the arrests were done in relation with the examination. Some candidates will buy UTME and Direct Entry at the same time, we have told them not to buy two forms. If your A level exam is alright, you can seek an upgrade at no cost. We try to make life easier to those who patronise our services.