Section 10 of the Act deals with the fund of the Board of JAMB as follows:
“16. The Board shall establish and maintain a fund which shall consist of –
(a) such sums as may be provided by the Federal Government for the running expenses of the Board; and
(b) such other sums as may be collected or received by the Board from other sources either in the execution of its functions or in respect of any property vested in the Board or otherwise howsoever.”
ALSO SEE: Why Must Students Take UTME Every Year?
From the above, it is clear that the primary source of funding for JAMB activities and the discharge of its functions is through government subvention and not to milk hapless candidates and their distressed parents. In reports monitored in the media, JAMB has however turned the establishment Act on its head and transmitted itself into a cash cow for the government.
“The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says it has made an interim remittance of N3.5 billion to the federal government’s purse after the conduct of its 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) … In 2017, the agency said it remitted more than N5 billion to the government. In 2018, the Board remitted N7.8 billion to the federal government. In 2019, JAMB remitted N5 billion to the federal government.”
For clarity, the Act setting up JAMB does not confer on it the power to raise funds for the government, as it is not an agency of government set up to generate revenue but rather to co-ordinate admissions into tertiary institutions. If this can be done free of charge to the candidates who are mostly teenagers, the better for us all, rather than focusing on how much is to be declared in financial terms every year. Section 10 (a) of the JAMB Act states clearly that the Board is to “establish and MAINTAIN a fund”, which connotes a permanent and operational fund, not to be transferred or remitted. According to the learned authors of Merriam-Webster online dictionary, to maintain is “to keep in an existing state, preserve from decline”, such that if JAMB has reached a stage that it has funds in excess after the discharge of its functions, then it should declare its examinations free for a particular period of time until the fund is exhausted to entitle it to charge fresh fees. We cannot have an institution set up mainly to assist young people to activate their careers and turn itself into a money spinning entity such that it has become one of the main sources of income for profligate politicians who in turn convert these funds to sponsor their own children in highbrow institutions abroad. It is totally unfair. Unless we are saying that in the course of time, tiertiary institutions will soon start remitting funds to the government, from fees collected from the students!
In a nation where educational institutions have become endangered by bandits, terrorists, kidnappers and rapists, there is a need to fashion out deliberate policies that will reduce the battles that Nigerians face just to acquire meaningful education. If this had been the attitude of governments in times past, certainly many of us would not have dreamed of ever going through any tertiary institution in Nigeria. Funding of education should be a deliberate policy of the government, which should not be abandoned to greedy institutions and agencies that seem to have misplaced their original priorities for placement to be ranked among revenue making agencies of government.
Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN
Lekki, Lagos.
06/07/2021