Lawmakers criticise JAMB for spending N1.1bn on meals in 2024

…Proposes board’s removal from 2025 budget

Lawmakers have criticised the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for spending N1.1 billion on meals and refreshments in 2024, stating that the funds were generated largely from indigent students.

The lawmakers raised this concern when Ishaq Oloyede appeared before the National Assembly joint committee on finance to defend the 2025 budget.

Adams Oshiomhole, the senator representing Edo North queried: “You spent N1.1bn on meals and refreshments. Are you being freely fed by the government? What this means is that you are spending the money you generate from poor students, many of them orphans.”

He also knocked the agency for spending N850m on security, cleaning and fumigation in 2024.

“What did you fumigate? Is it mosquitoes that took all this money?”, he queried.

He further slammed JAMB for spending N600m on local travels even as he called on Oloyede to justify the N6.5bn on local training, N1bn on staff housing scheme, maintenance of vehicle and refurbishment, and N75m, among others.

The joint committee resolved to remove the board in the 2025 budget proposal, saying that it was not justifiable that the board remitted N4bn to the federation account and got N6bn from the Federal Government in 2024.

Giving a breakdown of the performance of the JAMB’s 2024 budget, Oloyede told the lawmakers that the board remitted N4bn to the Consolidated Revenue Fund while it got a grant of N6bn from the Federal Government.

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Oshiomhole questioned why a self-funding agency should be getting allocations from the Federal Government.

“You remitted N4bn and got N6bn from the Federal Government. Why not keep the N4bn and we stop the government from funding JAMB,” the chairman, the House Committee on Finance, Faleke asked.

Earlier, Sani Musa, chairman of the committee, expressed concerns over low remittances of revenues generated in 2024 by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and some government-owned enterprises (GOEs) to the Federation Account.

The MDAs at the meeting included: the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) and Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).

Others were: the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) and Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC).

Musa, who noted that the senate was deeply worried about the widening disparity between the substantial revenues accruable to the MDAs and their consistently low remittances to the federation account, said, “This trend undermines the government’s capacity to fund critical infrastructure and social services, calling to question issues of inefficiency, mismanagement and possible revenue leakages,” he said.

According to him, his committee’s mandate is to ensure transparency, accountability and efficiency in the financial operations of the agencies, just as he stressed that the committee would continue to scrutinise the MDAs’ revenue projections, performance and adherence to statutory remittance obligations.

Musa who explained that the session was to identify systematic doubts and recommend actionable results to reverse the troubling patterns, however, sought the cooperation and understanding of all stakeholders at the interactive session, saying that accurate data, comprehensive records and open data needed to be presented for the benefit of Nigerians.

“Let us approach these tasks with a shared commitment to building a stronger, more accountable fiscal framework for Nigeria. I call on all of us to please be very open on all those areas that we know, even if they are not presented to us”, he said.