The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board is seeking the National Assembly’s leave to increase registration fee for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations.
JAMB Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, made the appeal in Abuja on Wednesday at the public hearing on the proposed 2023-2025 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper organised by the committee.
Mr Oloyede urged the committee to remove JAMB from the annual national budget by granting it total autonomy to reduce the burden on the national treasury.
He, however, noted that there are conditions to be met before JAMB could be removed from the annual budget.
According to him, one of the conditions is that JAMB should be allowed to jerk its fees to N5,000 as it was a few years ago.
The Registrar recalled that JAMB did a downward review in 2017 after remitting N7.5bn revenue, adding that the amount charged for registration was reduced from N5, 000 to N3,500.
“There is nowhere that government funds this type of examination. They provide some support for the institution because students pay some token as registration fee; and from it, they bear the responsibility of salaries and provide some succours. He said
“We are comfortable to be taken off the budget but there are conditions. One of the conditions, for example, when students registered in 2016, we collected N5, 000 and that had been on for five years before I joined (JAMB).
When we came in, we remitted N7.5bn. We felt it was too much and approached the Federal Government to reduce the fees. We have not added a kobo since.
“I believe we should revert to the N5, 000 we were charging.”
