Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede, has expressed worries over reactions that trailed the missing N36 million from the board’s office in Makurdi, Benue State, reportedly swallowed by a mysterious snake.
Oloyede, who decried Nigerians for making jokes out of the missing N36 million, said that such events also happen in other government establishments but are not known to the public because the heads of such establishments “are also snakes.”
He said, “That is Nigerians for you, making jokes out of serious issue. I didn’t find it funny since the story broke out because I think as a nation with a future, rather than celebrating those achieving success, we are busy celebrating people who should be caned.
“You turned serious issue into a national or an international joke. There are many snakes in other establishments but because those overseeing them are also snakes, that is why they could not be able to identify those snakes.
“Rather than creating an impression that JAMB is extraordinarily bad, they should give us a lesson to check where we went wrong.”
The professor stated this in reaction to the recent claim by Philomena Chieshe, a sales clerk in JAMB office, Makurdi that her housemaid connived with another JAMB staff, Joan Asen, to “spiritually” turn into a huge snake and swallow N36 million from the vault in her office.
Chieshe made the revelation during a recent interrogation by a team of auditors, adding that Joan Asen and her accomplices told her that they were responsible for all the money missing in the office through the use of a mysterious snake that always sneaked into the office to swallow the money from the vault.
But when Oloyede appeared in a programme on African Independent Television titled ‘Focus’, on Tuesday, he expressed regret that Nigerians chose to turn the incident into a joke, an act he said amounts to celebration of mediocrity.
Speaking further on the matter, Oloyede explained that the incident happened before he was appointed JAMB boss.
“In the case of the snake swallowing money, I think what happened was something that happened towards the tail end of 2016.
“I came in later part of 2016 and my mandate was to correct things that were not properly done. But I had the fortune or misfortune of having those selling the scratch cards prior to my appointment to give account since we stopped the sale of the scratch cards.
“And in the course of our investigation, some nasty stories were being told, which, of course we didn’t buy and that was why we took the appropriate decision. To us in JAMB, it was an old story because it wasn’t a recent issue, it happened few months after I came on board.
“When they could not account for the money, I had to invite them and to tell us what happened to the money. There were more ridiculous stories than the snake swallowing money story. In fact, some of the stories that entered the media were even smaller than what I heard in the course of my investigation.
“We have 1,500 staff members; there are wonderful individuals among them, so I wouldn’t want to dent their images by mentioning those revelations that came up.
“We had a story of some invigilators, who went for invigilation and were given N1million to allow students indulge in examination malpractice, because their lives were in danger, they accepted the money and deposited in JAMB’s account, that are the people we should celebrate and not those saying spiritual snake swallowed their money.”
