The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has returned N2,000,000,000:00 to the Federal Government’s Consolidated Revenue Fund from the excess generated from its operation during the conduct of 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and Direct Entry (DE) examinations.
The board said the N2 billion retuned to the government coffers was an interim remittance, meaning more returns may be made at the end of the board’s activities before the end of the year.
The figure was obtained from the board’s Weekly Bulletin for this month and was confirmed yesterday in Abuja by the Head of Media and Information, Dr. Fabian Benjamin.
A total of 1,338,687 candidates registered for the 2021 UTME, while 75,328 registered for the DE.
The examinations took place in June in 757 Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres.
Last year, the board, under the leadership of the Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, returned N7 billion to the government coffers at the end of the conduct of UTME/DE.
Over 1.9 million candidates registered for the examination.
With the introduction of the National Identity Number (NIN) in the registration of candidates for this year’s examination, the number of registered candidates dropped.
Benjamin said: “We have returned N2 billion to the government coffers in the interim; meaning that that is not all, as something will be remitted again.
“We have forecasted and seen that we also have excess but we have not finished what we are doing. So far, we are giving this pending when we will finish our operations. Then, we will know what we will give for the year.
“Once we do policy meeting and 2021/2022 admissions start, then we will know that we have finished our activities for the year. At that point, we can close our eyes and remit whatever is left.”