By Christiana Ekpa
Senate yesterday resolved to investigate the low remittance by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) into the Federation Government account before 2016.
The resolution followed the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance moved by Sen. Dino Melaye.
Moving the motion, Senator Dino Melaye (APC Kogi) disclosed that JAMB before 2016 paid into the federation account a meager N50 million as revenue generated from University and Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME), saying that the revenue only increased to N5 billion in 2016 and N7.8 billion in 2017.
He questioned why the revenue remitted by JAMB in the past had been low.
“Since JAMB can remit N7billion in one month, we must work on relevant agencies like National Examination Council (NECO) and West African Examination Council (WAEC) to generate more revenue.There is need for the relevant Senate committee to effectively carry out its oversight function with a view to understanding what went wrong in the past and block all the leakages in the agencies.’’
Contributing, the Senate Leader, Sen. Ahmed Lawan, said, “something was amiss and we need to find out what happened in the past and why there is a sudden increase in remittances.’’
In his remarks, the President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki, directed the Senate Committee on Education to investigate the matter and educate the Senate on reasons for the increased remittances.
“And what action has been taken to get those who were there before to explain what happened,’’ Saraki said