The Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede has expressed concerns over the misrepresentation of figures in its 2025 budget proposal presented to the National Assembly Joint Committee on Finance.

At the 2025 budget defence in Abuja, the Committee queried for allocating huge sums of money for meals, fumigation and others.

Professor Oloyede attempted to make more clarification but was directed to come back in three days with a more comprehensive presentation.

Fielding questions from newsmen on the sidelines at an event in Abuja, the Registrar of JAMB explained that misunderstandings arose because the detailed breakdown of the budget proposal was not fully reviewed during the presentation.

He said “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”.

Professor Oloyede stated that the Board’s total expenditure for fumigation across all states in 2024 was less than N1 million.

” I did not talk about the 2024 budget performance. And we did not spend any money, 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 noted

On the N6.5 million allegedly spent on training in 2024, Professor Oloyede said the money is just a proposal for 2025 that cuts 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” He further explained.

He also gave clarification on the amount budgeted for meals.

: “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 to go in and come out, you also know that we have some ICT infrastructure that will be damaged if we allow people to be bringing food and remnants.

” So we created the canteen and we provided for them, 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? ”

On the clamour for downward review of Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) fee instead of the Board remitting money to federal coffers, Professor Oloyede said : “I think for me to the best of my knowledge I have done what I’m supposed to do. We have reduced it from N5,000 to N3,500.

The JAMB Registrar, said another figure that was misrepresented was the amount proposed for cleaners, security, among others.

Professor Oloyede, however, expressed hope that the National Assembly committee would allow him to provide further clarifications on the budget to resolve any lingering misunderstandings.