JAMB registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, in this interview with Gboyega Alaka and Frank Ikpefan, speaks about the ongoing changes in the examination board and the systems being put in place to prevent further indiscretion. Oloyede, who is also Secretary, Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, also spoke on religious tolerance and the efforts the Muslim community is making to secure the release of Leah Sharibu and other kidnapped school girls.
YOU have literally transformed JAMB in just about two years, raking in N5b in place of N3million revenue the body used to ‘make’. How did you do it?
Mine is that I was given a mandate to go and discharge as responsibly and as honestly as possible the responsibility a duty and I did. What remains belonged to the government and we returned it to the government. It is the same thing we are doing this year. Whatever remains will be returned. Last year, people were saying maybe there were accumulated money that we met and we now returned to the government. Of course I said it was not true. This year too, the fact is that the surplus is as much, if not more than last year’s, and this shows clearly that with proper management, we could do better.
You have also uncovered cans of worms in JAMB. The case of the JAMB official who allegedly claimed millions of naira was swallowed by a snake is a case in point. What has happened to some of them?
That issue was an old story at the time it became public because it had been firmly dealt with and the matter had been put behind us, following the normal process and procedures. Of course the EFCC told you that they had been on the investigation at least one year ago; the ICPC had been on it too; the Police too. They were not leaving those people to just go about, and I will say I am very satisfied with the steps being taken because it is not enough to just charge people to court. It is not enough to just dismiss them. The amount of money involved is such that we believe that recovery is as important as sanctioning. As at the time the matter even became public, these people were not in the services of JAMB.
Have they been fired in line with the recommendation of the management of the board to the minister of education?
Normal procedures and processes have been followed. You don’t just wake up one day and say you have dismissed people who are in public service. There must be a procedure and it may be long, but the fact that they were not on duty means something was being done. You gain nothing if you are hasty and at the end of the day you commit mistakes and they are restored by the courts.
Efforts to transit to computerised JAMB was clumsy until you came on board. This year’s JAMB was nearly flawless. How did you do it?
We will continue to improve. We thank all the stakeholders because people willingly and freely offered us suggestions, and since we were open to suggestions, we came up with issues that were solving some of the problems. I think Nigerians are very creative. The idea of our code, for instance, was something that was brought up by one of the managers of ECO Bank in one of our meetings and it became an issue that solved most of our problems. So we want to thank Nigerians, particularly the press for unsolicited suggestions that became very useful.
You once said that parents’ interference is a major problem of the board. What is JAMB doing to reduce this interference?
Beyond the general public announcement and general education, it appears to me that we cannot have a forum of parents of prospective candidates. So, we will continue to educate them. It is a very serious and dangerous malaise that is afflicting our education sector, that parents want their children to be in a particular place, on a particular course at all cost. It constitutes the greatest headache examination bodies face. Parents, particularly mothers, are becoming desperate in their bid to place their wards and children in place. I think they should understand that what God does not make, nobody can make; and anything gained through illegitimate means, you have already destroyed ab initio. The same way, any child you sponsor with fraudulent money cannot make it. If you like send the child to London, to America. So, if you have to go and commit sin and crime because you want admission for your child, you are destroying the child and you are destroying the nation; and it is a very bad development that we should not allow to fester.
One of the things we have done now is that we are going to, at the appropriate time, announce the distance that anybody who is not our candidate should keep from our centres. Once anyone is found within the distance and the child or ward is found to be in the examination centre, we will penalise them.
Over 1.5million candidates wrote JAMB last year but the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) said only 500, 000 could be admitted. Is there a collaboration between JAMB, NUC or the universities to ensure that access to tertiary education is expanded?
What you have said is one side of the story. We collaborate with NUC, with NBTE and with NCCE. We collaborate to make sure that we are on the same page. As true as that statement is, it is not the whole truth because if you go into my office, you will see the electronic board, which tells the whole story. Those who sat for the UTME and Direct Entry in 2017 were 1.8 million, but after the examination, even when we went as low as 120/400, 700,000 of these candidates were found not to be qualified. That is, they scored below cut-off. So, 700, 000 were cut off, leaving us with 1.1 million. The second stage was, how many of this 1.1 million had five O’ levels, English and Math. I have even found out that the credit in English and Math that we are talking about is just a paper tiger that even the first class universities in Nigeria are not honouring. They are very sensible enough to wave Mathematics when it is not needed. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that contrary to what we announce to the whole world, there are many people in our first class universities who don’t have Mathematics because they don’t need it. The official narrative is that before somebody can go to university, he/she requires a credit in Maths and English, but it is not true. When I was raising alarm, they called and said look, how many candidates will we have in humanities if we continue to insist on Mathematics? I believe it is a pleasant thing but I am pained that we are doing it under the table rather than officially. What we are saying is that, you find that another 300,000 of this 1.1 million do not have the prerequisite O’ level, so you are left with 700, 000 or 800,000 candidates. Out of this 700,000 or 800, 000, we have already admitted close to 600,000. It is still not good enough but it is not as bad as we are portraying it. What we need in my own view is to expand the facilities in some big universities, so that they can take more.
Have you given that suggestion to the minister or the Federal Government?
If I have, I will not even tell you. I am expressing my opinion. You asked a question, and as an academic, as somebody who sees what is going on, my own advice is that we should expand rather than proliferate the institutions. We should make first class universities like Unilorin, University of Jos, UNIMAD, ABU, expand so that they can take more. If you create a university, it will take about ten years before it can even take large numbers, no matter how well located. Even the nine sisters (12) that were created lately, let us expand their intakes.
With the level of success you have achieved, what institutions are you putting in place to ensure that the old ways don’t come back when you leave?
I believe that we will do our best to put in structures and we are doing so, but I also believe that there should be effective monitoring system. Without sounding patronising, if the minister of education is on your neck every time, asking you ‘give me report, what is happening?’ and even suggesting what you can do to improve, then you can only improve. So if the monitoring is kept on, monitoring that is genuine, monitoring that is sincere, not monitoring that wants to make you do what you are not supposed to do, then things will go on well. But more importantly, my own suggestions is, let us train quality human beings. No matter the number of Police, the number of EFCC, the number of ICPC, we still need to build people to know that crime, most of the crimes we commit are sins before God, and if you want to satisfy God, you will run away from sin and run away eventually from crimes. We need to train the minds of human beings to know that they don’t need to be policed. What is important is to take public life, public service as a spiritual duty, as a religious duty. Unfortunately, even religious people are now defrauding the institutions and religious houses, and that’s what is creating confusion. The Islam that I understand does not put a dichotomy between a religious service and a public service. Once you are serving, serve with sincerity, serve with honesty and leave the rest to God.
You were recently quoted as saying that Nigeria is governed by certified thieves. Those are strong words. Do you want to expatiate on this?
Yes, what I have explained is that the looting that is going on in public life is unimaginable, and I cited the case of JAMB – the wide gap between the returns since 2017 and what it returned in the last ten years. I was just using that as an example to say that when it comes to governance of this Nigeria, corruption issue is a matter that should be faced squarely. Nobody should underrate or feel that the fight against corruption is not an achievement. Corruption is capable of destroying the whole nation and I am saying emphatically that if we had put mechanisms in place in the past two decades, maybe we will not be where we are now. Everybody talks about the attention the president, by practice or by action, is paying to corruption – and I have not seen any sane person accuse him of corruption directly; I am saying that if we have leadership that put corruption on the front burner and pursue it both at personal and official level, Nigeria will improve. That is the message I am making.
But a lot of people are still cynical of the president’s anti-corruption war, while some are out-rightly against it. Do you think it is a battle worth fighting, going by the level of antagonism?
If you want to fight corruption, expect antagonism. Just be sincere in what you are doing. For me, those who are fighting corruption are undergoing a risky venture. I am experienced enough, particularly in the last two years, to see corruption in its nudity and to know that network of corruption is so comprehensive and so strong that you will just think you are fighting a corrupt person, not knowing that there are chains of connections. Corruption has such a web in this nation, that you will be surprised that the person you are even complaining to is part of the problem. My own view about the present government is that it is underrating corruption. There is need for a strategy because you are fighting a very strong enemy.
What do you think is responsible for Nigerians’ kleptomaniac tendency? Especially public officials in government.
I am not aware of anywhere in the world where discretion is allowed to the level that it is allowed in Nigeria. There are so many things that is being done by discretion. No procedure, no rule and when there is such a large room for discretion, the possibility of corruption will also come in. That is number one. The second one is that the monetary system is weak. You see, many people will not steal, not because they don’t want to steal, but because they know that in most cases, they will be caught. But in a situation where people know that 90 percent of the time, they will go scot free, you are encouraging corruption. I believe we need to put structures in place that will checkmate those who want to be corrupt. For instance, you sell forms for JAMB every year, let us say at N5,000; if you calculate the number of forms sold, you know what the amount is and you need to ask: what are you doing with this money? Another one that is compounding the problem is that you have instances where people out rightly tell lies. A member of the House of Representatives went before the National Assembly to tell the whole world that the cost of obtaining JAMB form is N7, 500. Since I came in, nobody has bought the form for more than N5, 000 because we have blocked the hoarding system since 2016. So, if somebody now comes before the public and say they are buying the form for N7,500 and starts calculating N7,500, you are pained. If these are people that entrusted you with the work, then it is either the man is not pleased that we are returning the money or he wants us to squander it. Where was he when the money was not being returned? He persuaded the whole assembly to go along with him, so what do you do? You are left naked. These are part of the complications in the Nigerian society.
Since Buhari came into power, the clamour for separation has increased. What is your position on this?
This is where I have a problem with the media. We tend to be momentary, rather go to the archives and research into issues. Whether it is ten years ago or fifteen years ago, there have always been issues of people being dissatisfied with one thing or the other. What gave rise to the Obasanjo political reform conference of 1995? What gave rise to all the constitutional conferences we have been having? Is it not agitation for one thing or the other? So, in ten or twenty years’ time, Buhari will not be there, but these issues will remain, unless we address them. The Benue-Tivs conflict, for example, is as old as Nigeria itself. Even at the time of the colonial masters, the Tiv and Fulani problem was there. If you see an average Fulani and Tiv today cracking jokes, the Fulani man will say ‘Where is my cow?’ and the Tiv will reply, ‘Munchi, I’ve eaten it.’ Is that not a joke and is it not historical? The issue of farmers killing cows because they destroyed their farms is something that has happened before. Buhari was not in power when the Emir of Gombe and the late Tor Tiv set up a committee to address this issue in 2009 when Suswam was governor. It is just that in Nigeria, we pick one issue and present it as if it had no precedence. Unless we address some of these problems, you will just scapegoat whoever is in power and commit sin unduly. How will somebody be the president of a nation and be instigating people to go and kill other people during his tenure. What is the logic there?
Recently at The Point Newspaper Ramadan Lecture in Lagos, you cautioned Muslims who have been clamouring for a free Friday, can you reiterate that for a larger audience?
The level of hatred and unbridled competition among the religious people is making us to even abandon the precepts and principles of our religions. We are saying that it was Christianity that asked for a Sabbath, not Islam. Any day you choose is okay for the Muslims. I believe it is not necessary to say ‘because Christians have Sunday, we must have Friday,’ provided that on Friday when you want to go and pray between 12 PM and 3 PM, no one stops you. Government has said, let there be no official functions between 12pm and 3pm, so that the Muslims can go and observe their Friday prayers. That is accommodating all. Let the Christians have their Saturdays and Sundays, and we all go on happily.
But a situation where people conclude that because Muslims go on pilgrimage, we (Christians) must also have pilgrimages does not help us. We are Islamizing our Christianity, because hajj is a pillar of Islam, not a pillar of Christianity. In the same way, Sabbath is not an issue in Islam, so when you insist on a Sabbath, you are Christianizing Islam.
When you were first appointed Registrar of JAMB, a lot of Nigerians and some of your staff expressed fears on your strong views on Islam. How have you been able to convince them that your mission in JAMB is not to Islamize the board?
If anybody is afraid of Islam then that person has got it wrong. I am a Muslim and I have no apologies about that. Islam is everything that is good. If somebody now says that because I am JAMB registrar, I should not be a Muslim then he’d better take his JAMB registrar from me. Islam does not allow you to persecute others, twist or commit injustices against others simply because they do not share your faith. Anybody who has that feeling probably does not understand Islam, or has a bad experience with people who claim to be Muslims but are not Muslims. Public trust is public trust, justice has no creed, it has no colour or tribe. Once you are unjust, you are not godly. Islam teaches justice for all. This is not my first public office. Anybody that has the fear of being persecuted is probably someone that persecutes others. For me, in public office, you don’t serve God by committing injustice.
Newspaper reports recently quoted you as saying that the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs is negotiating with Boko Haram to see to the release of Leah Sharibu and other girls. Has the council made contact with Boko Haram?
Are you not aware that people are negotiating with Boko Haram at all levels?
But sir, success has not been achieved.
Success is with God. When an innocent girl is in captivity, every right-thinking person should spend time to reflect on what they can do, even on a personal level, to make sure she is not hurt in any way. Bodies like the council should not fold their arms and allow an innocent girl to be killed. They are doing all within their power to make sure that innocent people in captivity are released. Of course the number of Muslims that are being killed by the day by Boko Haram is more than the Christians. So if they accept the Muslim leaders as their leaders, wouldn’t they have stopped killing Muslims? We have found ourselves in this situation, and we must not fold our arms and say we have done our best. The difference between Islam and other religions is that we hardly talk. We rarely give public talks because we believe it is unnecessary. What I believe is that all human beings of conscience should do whatever is humanly possible to ensure that those in captivity, including that innocent girl should not be made to suffer. I believe that the Muslim leaders are committed to that, and I am in the position to know. Even the Sultan will tell you some daring steps he has taken, even at the expense of his personal safety, to make sure that all this mess is brought to an end, but he doesn’t dramatise it, or go to the press about it.
Your success as Vice Chancellor at UNIILORIN has remained a talking point. How were you able to do those things you did, particularly avoiding strikes for such a long time?
Many people do not realise that I inherited a strong university. University of Ilorin was not an ordinary university when I became Vice Chancellor. I was just lucky to have inherited such a university. I just played my role like the others before me and the success was a cumulative success. I was standing on the shoulders of great men who had, before me, administered the university and that was what helped whatever we were said to have done. I was the VC for five years, and for four of those years, I was the only Muslim among the principal officers. It didn’t really matter. I had committed people. My two Deputy Vice Chancellors were Christians, my Bursar was a Christian, my Registrar was a Christian, and we were working harmoniously. I nominated them, not that I met them and could not do anything about them. It is about the quality of the human being. We are allowing charlatans to take advantage of religion, people who have nothing to offer. They now just want to set the whole country ablaze simply because of their own narrow perception of the nation.
