(PACAC)Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption has soughted the clarification on the N36 million allegedly swallowed by snake at the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board.
It began when a team of auditors working with JAMB arrival in Benue State, Makurdi to take an inventory of sold/unsold scratch cards and audit the finances of the office in Benue state.
But the sales clerk in the office, Philomina Chieshe, told the JAMB Registrar, Prof.Mr.Ishaq Oloyede, and his team she could not account for the N36 million made in previous years before the scratch cards abolition .
In the course of interrogation, Chieshe confessed that it was her housemaid that connived with another JAMB official, Joan Asen, to “spiritually” steal the money from the vault in the accounts office.
“I was one of the four sales clerks attached to JAMB office in Benue Makurdi. My responsibility was to sell scratch cards to candidates. I’m not involved in handling the money, it was the responsibility of Joan Asen and other senior colleagues. I only remit money of sold scratch cards. But a few months ago, there was an issue of fraud in the office. Auditors were sent from Abuja. The state coordinator, Obilo, was not around when the audit team came. But in the course of the audit, N36m was discovered to be missing from the account. An investigation was launched.
“I have been saving the money in the bank but I found it difficult to account for it. So, I started saving it in a vault in the office. But each time I open the vault, I will find nothing. I became worried and surprised how millions of naira could be disappearing from the vault. I began to interrogate everybody in the house and office, and no one could agree on what might have happened to the money.
“I continued to press until my maid confessed. She said that the money disappeared spiritually. She said that a mysterious snake sneaked into the house and swallowed the money in the vault,” Chieshe told the team,
But Oloyede had since dismissed the claim, saying the case was that of pure criminality and fraud on the part of an official.
The Chairman of PACAC, Prof. Itse Sagay, who led other members of the committee to the headquarters of JAMB yesterday, said he was also interested in the other challenges being faced by the board that required the panel’s assistance.
JAMB had earlier explained that the fraud was committed before the coming of the current registrar. It said the fraud was discovered in one of the states when the Oloyede-led management embarked on a tour of the board’s offices to ascertain their actual financial standing and their general operations.
This prompted Oloyede to introduce reforms when he assumed office in 2016, including the recommendation that the use of scratch cards should be stopped and replaced with a more efficient and effective mode of pin vending.
Sagay commended Oloyede for his high level integrity.
“We are also curious to some other things. For example, I remember in some time past, it used to be commonly believed that if you sit for a JAMB examination, different results would be prepared for you and you will score high marks and when you go to the university, you underperform.
“Has this problem been eliminated? Also, we read recently of some members of staff of JAMB at the lower level who accumulated a lot of cash and did not properly account for the money, leading them to make very absurd defences which have created a lot of fun nationwide.
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