Is’haq Oloyede, the registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has been selected as the NextMoney Person of the year 2021.
The Editorial Board of NextMoney, Nigeria’s authoritative financial magazine selected JAMB big boss on the basis of his relentless and uncompromising pursuit of academic excellence in Nigeria.
Besides, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Ilorin’s unwavering commitment to transparency and accountability in public service stood him out among others.
Oloyede, while serving as the vice-chancellor at the University of Ilorin (Unilorin), pursued academic excellence as though his whole life depended on it. Concomitantly, Unilorin became the most sought-after institution by candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions in the country.
And soaring on the wings of academic excellence feathered by him, Unilorin’s ranking among world universities has remained on the upward trajectory.
While as chief executive of JAMB, Oloyede leaves no stone unturned as he relentlessly and avowedly pursues academic excellence by ensuring that admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria is transparent and credible.
Recall that JAMB under the leadership of Oloyede returned the sum of N3.51 billion to the national treasury as an operating surplus in 2021. This practice of remittance to the national treasury has been the standard practice since 2016 when Oloyede remitted the sum of N7billion to the nation’s coffers.
Quietly and steadily, he is leading a revolution in the Nigerian educational system, ostensibly with the objective of implanting academic excellence especially at the tertiary level of education in the country.
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The revolution Oloyede is leading ensures that no candidate without the requisite academic achievements finds himself/herself on the campus of any tertiary institution in the country as a student. He is prosecuting this revolution by conducting very credible, transparent, and fraud-free Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), and by ensuring that admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria is based first and foremost on merit.
President Muhammadu Buhari endorsed the reappointment of Oloyede in 2021 after serving a 5-year tenure that ended in August last year based on his outstanding performance.
On resumption of his second tenure of 5 years, Oloyede has not only turned around JAMB but has also clearly indicated that he will take it to the very height of international standard and make it non-secondus in managing admissions into higher institutions of learning in Nigeria.
Among other outstanding achievements of Oloyede so far is JAMB’s new sense of public accountability and transparency manifesting in the annual remittance of surplus revenue to the federal government in the last five years a phenomenon not associated with the board in the past decades.
With this, JAMB has become a role model in public accountability, transparency, and effective management and administration of human and material resources.
Second, to that is the introduction of technology in the conduct of the annual UTME and administration of admission processes. Oloyede, through this revolutionary approach, has made all the embarrassing examination malpractices hitherto associated with UTME to become a thing of the past.
With the introduction of the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), the renowned academician has cleaned up the Augean Stable of admission process into higher institutions of learning in the country.
With CAPS, the issue of illegal admissions has been rolled into the realm of history. This is definitely impacting the quality of students admitted into the country’s tertiary institutions. The ultimate outcome will be the production of academically sound graduates who can contribute meaningfully to the country’s economic growth and development.
