Very few Nigerians in public offices can boast of diligence, accountability and transparency in the discharge of their duties. One of such people is the Registrar and Chief Executive of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede. As he turns 70 today, we believe that the best way to celebrate and honour him is to let the world know what has made this man tick.
Born in Abeokuta South Local Government Area of Ogun State on October 10, 1954, Oloyede had his secondary school education at Progressive Institute, Agege Lagos, between 1969 and 1973. He learned Arabic Studies and Islamic Studies at the Arabic Training Centre, Agege Lagos, between 1973 and 1976. He received a certificate in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Ibadan in 1977 and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Arabic at the University of Ilorin in 1981. In 1991, he obtained a doctorate degree in Islamic Studies at the University of Ilorin where he became a professor in 1995. As a student, Oloyede won prizes and scholarships.
Some of the good qualities that stand this Professor of Islamic Studies out are his honesty, diligence and accountability. These qualities showed clearly when he was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin between 2007 and 2012. During this period, the university became highly-ranked not just in Nigeria but also in Africa.
However, it is in JAMB that the star in Oloyede has shone brightly. Appointed as the Registrar of JAMB by former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016, Oloyede has lifted that institution beyond the imagination of many Nigerians. In 2023, news went round that a young girl called Miss Joy Mmesoma Ejikeme had the highest score in that year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). She purportedly got 362 over 400. JAMB debunked the news, but Miss Ejikeme and some of her supporters drew daggers with the institution. Painstakingly, JAMB explained the examination processes and how Ejikeme falsified her results. When it dawned on the candidate that there was no escape route, she owned up to her forgery and apologized.
This is part of the fruits of the sanitization of the admission processes into our universities which JAMB under Oloyede instituted. Before 2017, there were irregularities in the admission processes of our higher institutions. About 706,189 illegal admissions were purportedly made in many of these institutions between 2017 and 2020.
In 2017, JAMB introduced the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS) to ensure transparency and credibility of admissions. No institution is expected to admit any candidate outside CAPS as from 2020. About 88 tertiary institutions allegedly made illegal admissions for the 2022/2023 academic session. Some students who colluded with their institutions to falsify vital records in order to participate in the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Scheme encountered problems. The Board gave a one-month deadline starting from August 1, 2024 for tertiary institutions to disclose their illegal admissions done before 2017. These illegal admissions have caused enormous damage to the image and standards of our higher institutions.
Despite Oloyede’s efforts to sanitize the system, some stakeholders believe that what JAMB is doing amounts to undermining the University Autonomy Act. But they forget that returning to the old system is akin to making way for some corrupt officials of the universities to collect bribes and abuse the admission process to accommodate less qualified candidates. Some people have also criticized Oloyede for remitting huge sums of money every year to the coffers of the Federal Government. They feel JAMB is not a revenue generating agency.
It is worthy to note that in one year of Oloyede’s assumption of office, precisely in 2017, JAMB remitted N7.8 billion to the government. This is far higher than about N50 million which JAMB cumulatively remitted to the Federal Government between 1978 and 2016. Annually, JAMB under Oloyede has continued to remit billions of naira to the Federal Government. This is besides the internally generated revenue which he increased and used to engender both human and physical development of the Board. An appreciative Vice-President Kashim Shettima, recently, hailed him and said he was the first JAMB Registrar who made over N50 billion for the Federal Government within one year. Oloyede increased the revenue of the Board because he was accountable and honest. His predecessors generated the revenue but did not account for it well.
For his transparency and leadership skills, Oloyede has garnered a lot of awards. Some of them include: Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR), Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON), the National Productivity Order of Merit (NPOM) award, and the Nigeria Excellence Award in Public Service (Education Category). He is a Fellow of the Islamic Academy of Cambridge, United Kingdom, Fellow, Academy of Letters, Fellow of Entrepreneurship, Fellow, Nigerian Institute of Management, among others. He is also a member of many professional associations. We congratulate Oloyede on attaining the age of 70 and wish him more successes in his endeavours. We urge young Nigerians to emulate him and others like him.