Over the past 10 years, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has remitted more than N50bn to the Federal Government as operating surplus, according to its Public Communication Adviser, Dr Fabian Benjamin.
Benjamin made this known while speaking at a dialogue hosted by the Education Writers Association of Nigeria on Zoom, themed “2026 Admission Policy Review and JAMB Scorecard: A Conversation with the Registrar.” The session examined admissions and tertiary education matters and reviewed Prof Ishaq Oloyede’s decade long leadership of the Board.
He explained that the payments were made in line with government policy mandating agencies to remit a percentage of their surplus, and warned against interpreting the gesture as proof that JAMB operates primarily to generate income.
“There is an impression that JAMB has become a revenue generating agency. It is not,” he noted. “But there is a regulation that every agency, whether revenue generating or not, must remit a certain percentage of its excess surplus. What JAMB is doing is not out of place.”
According to Benjamin, the Board’s savings stemmed largely from technological changes introduced under Oloyede, including the 2016 switch from Very Small Aperture Terminal dishes to telecom based SIM card connectivity for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination. This shift brought connectivity costs down from roughly N1.2bn to under N100m.
“He invited the service providers to reduce the cost, but they declined. The Board then adopted the use of telecom providers and SIM cards, which we still use today, bringing the cost down to less than N100m,” Benjamin recounted.
He also pointed to the introduction of mock examinations, computer based testing and biometric verification as reforms that curbed impersonation and other malpractice, despite early technical hitches during the 2017 maiden mock exam.
On the UTME registration fee, currently N3,500 after being lowered from N5,000 in 2018, Benjamin disclosed that rising operational costs, especially for privately run Computer Based Test centres, could force a review.
“As I speak with you, there is a debate on whether that is still practicable because of the rising cost of things. I will not be surprised if the fee is likely to go up again,” he revealed.
He insisted JAMB’s fee remains among the cheapest globally and that any future increase would be driven by economic realities, not a push for higher revenue.
Oloyede exits office on July 31, 2026, handing over to Prof Segun Aina on August 1, 2026.
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