…as Nigerians renew calls for scrapping body
By Adebayo Obajemu
Recently President Bola Ahmed Tinubu appointed Professor Segun Aina as the new Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). At 39 years old (turning 40 in July), he has made history as the youngest registrar of the board since founding, succeeding Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, whose tenure ends on July 31, 2026.
Professor Aina, said to be a highly credentialed scholar and system engineer holds a PhD in Digital Signal Processing and an MSc in Internet Computing and Network Security from Loughborough University, UK, as well as a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Kent.
Not entirely new to JAMB and how examination bodies work, his journey with JAMB, according to BH’s investigations, began during his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) program, where he gained foundational experience in national admissions.
Before his appointment, he was a Professor of Computer Engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, and served as a consultant to other examination bodies including NECO and NABTEB.
Oloyede’s stewardship
Right from the time of his appointment in 2016 as the new JAMB registrar, controversy had trailed Professor Ishaq Oloyede. In that year, ASUU strongly kicked against his appointment given his antecedent as former Vice Chancellor of University of Ilorin, saying his time was marred with anti-democratic and anti-union antecedents.
The then ASUU President, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi said, “Given our inside knowledge of his anti-democratic and anti-union antecedents, Professor Oloyede is the last person that we expected to be so honored with a national appointment of that status in the education sector.”
According to him, Oloyede’s anti-workers stance stood out in the case of the sacked UNILORIN 49, adding, “he led the Administration’s team to as far as Lagos to testify falsely against the workers before the Industrial Arbitration Panel.”
He recalled that in 2008, Oloyede as VC said that UNILORIN is happy without ASUU, while at the same time collecting money from UNILORIN academics in the name of ASUU without remitting same to the Union.
Under Oloyede’s stewardship, JAMB had faced recurring issues in recent years, including breaches of computer-based test centers, delays in result processing, allegations of malpractice, and complaints from candidates about registration glitches and centre allocation.
There has also been issue of corruption and technical failures, which has often led to public outcry.
Each cycle of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) has renewed public debate about whether JAMB’s digital infrastructure can scale reliably and remain secure against evolving methods of fraud.
Some ask, if Aina had been part of the JAMB process with all the problems encountered in recent time, what new is he bringing?
Many Nigerians, including the chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Sunny Onuesoke, had called on the Federal Government to either scrap or reform JAMB as they said it had become a money-making venture for the government.
The former Delta PDP governorship aspirant said the billions of naira generated by JAMB yearly were at the expense of poor parents and prospective students, most of whom failed to pass above a 200 grade used by most universities as the benchmark for admission.
Oloyede’s Achievement
He also argued that it could hardly be justified that out of 1.9 million candidates who sat for the UTME, only 8,400 candidates scored 300 and above. Oloyede had made history as the first registrar to remit N4 billion to the federal government from zero when he took over.
Business Hallmark reports that since he assumed office in 2016, the JAMB Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede’s administration has contributed over N50 billion to Nigeria’s treasury.
In January 2025, JAMB said it generated N22.9 billion in 2024, of which it remitted N6 billion as operating surplus to the government.
The Board noted that the N1,500 reduction in the cost of the UTME form fees for candidates, multiplied by the number of beneficiaries, raised the total remittance value to N9 billion.
The Board also remitted N2 billion as its interim surplus for the 2023 operating year to the Federal Government, with the Board’s spokesperson, Fabian Benjamin, promising that more would be remitted when the JAMB’s operations for the year are completed.
In 2021, the JAMB said it remitted N3.51 billion to the Federal Government as its operating surplus. The examination body also said it made an interim remittance of N3.5 billion to the Federal Government’s purse after the conduct of its 2020 UTME. This was a big leap from the subventions government used to give to it for budget allocations.
In response to the 2021 remittance by the exam body, the zonal coordinator of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Laja Odukoya, criticized JAMB’s actions, alleging that the Board was exploiting poor Nigerians.
Odukoya questioned the source and destination of the funds, expressing concern that the money generated by JAMB was not being redirected to institutions that urgently need infrastructural upgrades to enhance global competitiveness or to alleviate the financial burden on Nigerian students.
Instead, he argued, the funds were funneled back to the government to support what he described as the recklessness and profligacy of public officials.
Scandals and controversies
In 2018, JAMB became the subject of national discuss when Philomina Chieshe, a JAMB official in Benue State, claimed that a snake had swallowed N36 million from the Board’s vault.
According to her, the money, collected from the sale of scratch cards, mysteriously disappeared after being swallowed by the snake.
Though, for sometimes, JAMB has earned commendation for improving transparency and remitting unprecedented revenues into the national treasury. Former President Muhammadu Buhari publicly acknowledged the remarkable financial stewardship of the board under the leadership of Professor Ishaq Oloyede, noting that no previous registrar had achieved comparable results.
But Adeola Balogun of Examination Transparency told Business Hallmark that “institutional success must never become a licence for administrative excess. Unfortunately, the board now appears increasingly emboldened to introduce policies that conflict with the constitutional rights and educational aspirations of Nigerian citizens.
He noted that “almost every admission cycle comes with a fresh layer of regulations, often introduced without adequate public enlightenment, only to become instruments for excluding, otherwise, qualified applicants from pursuing higher education.
Balogun’s fears may not be misplaced. The latest and, perhaps, most troubling new regulations from JAMB concerns university and polytechnic graduates seeking admission into undergraduate programs through direct entry. JAMB now insists that such applicants must produce the original admission letters it allegedly issued for their earlier academic programs.
This policy is not only unreasonable; it is historically and administratively tyrannical
Many Nigerians gained admission into tertiary institutions before JAMB began regulating admissions in certain sectors. For instance, one affected applicant secured admission to study Architecture at the Federal Polytechnic, Owo, Ondo State, in 1980 and graduated in 1985. Yet JAMB did not assume responsibility for regulating admissions into polytechnics until 1989.
Today, this individual seeks to advance academically by obtaining university and postgraduate degrees necessary for a full professional qualification as an architect. How exactly is he expected to produce a JAMB admission letter that never existed?
Similarly, many applicants undertook part-time studies or other programs outside JAMB’s admission framework. Others who graduated over four decades ago may understandably have misplaced documents issued many years earlier. To deny such citizens access to further education because of bureaucratic technicalities is both unjust and oppressive.
More disturbing is the fact that these additional requirements are often absent from JAMB’s official admission advertisements and public notices.
Even more alarming are reports that some officials within the Board are contemplating the introduction of an upper age limit for admission into tertiary institutions.
Fears of over-centralization
Many commentators have actually expressed worry over centralized examination body.
Professor Ojo Tanimola, a social psychologist, told Business Hallmark that “the idea of centralized examination body for tertiary admission is outdated. It was a creation of the military. Before 1978, each university conducted its own exams, and admitted candidates that applied according to their criteria and cutoffs.
In the words of Professor Ayorinde Opeyemi, adult education scholar, “JAMB should either be reformed or scraped, for me the better option is to go back to the old way where by each university will conduct their own test and admissions process.
When I was admitted to Ahmadu Bello University in 1976 it was a wholly ABU process, same applied to University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Ibadan, Lagos, Jos , Calabar and Benin and Ilorin. Currently, these private universities too also admit candidates on their own, though they also allow JAMB to admit candidates for them.
s”There’s a need to decentralize admissions and allow each institution to do it”, Opeyemi noted.
As it’s much expected from the new registrar in order to reposition the examination body, how this will pan out only time will tell.