The decision was made in response to apparent discrepancies in the examination body's and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation's (AGoF) finances, according to Hon. Oboku Abonsizibe Oforji, Chairman of the House Committee on Basic Education.
According to the state legislator from Bayelsa, the proposal was designed to guarantee responsibility and openness in the field of education.
Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, the JAMB Registrar, testified before the committee on Wednesday, stating that his organization began sending money to the CRF less than a year after he took office.
He told the Committee that N7.8 billion was remitted by JAMB in 2017, and that N5.2 billion, N3.68 billion, N3.82 billion, N3.5 billion, and N3.1 billion were remitted in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, in that order.
Oloyede also informed the MPs that N13.33 billion, N11.35 billion, N9.74 billion, and N12.62 billion in internal income were earned by JAMB under his direction in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.
But after Mrs. Lucy Anom, representing the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, submitted a submission indicating a discrepancy of N11 million, Committee Chairman Afoji Obuku called for a subcommittee to investigate the purported discrepancies and provide a report to the Committee on Basic Education.
However, the head of JAMB has taken issue with the Federal Government's automated deduction of monies from candidates' registration fees for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, or UTME.
According to Oloyede, the practice is considerably lowering its financial contribution to the CRF.
"We want that the government not give us salary.Although we make our own money, these automatic deductions have an impact on the money we receive for major projects," he stated.
Committee member Oyedeji Oyeshina (PDP, Oyo) noted that since 2019, JAMB's revenue generation and remittances to the federation's Consolidated Revenue Fund have decreased.
However, Oloyede spoke and clarified that the decrease in UTME applicants' examination fees resulted in a notable decline in the amount of money remitted to the federal government's coffers, according to the board's Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) schedule for 2019 to 2022.
He went on to say that the examination fee was lowered in 2019 from N5,000 to N3500, and that following the board's approval and implementation of this reduction, the federal government began automatically deducting internal revenue remittances.
The committee, which guaranteed efficient supervision of the testing body and some other organizations, had previously asked for the JAMB remittance records, procurement schedules, annual audited accounts, and schedule of internally generated revenue (IGR).
The committee also instructed JAMB to provide it with an exhaustive roster of its personnel in order to assess the organization's adherence to the Federal Character Principle.