JAMB registrar Ishaq Oloyede says six agencies are working to recover the organisation's stolen money

The case of a snake swallowing N36million belonging to JAMB shocked Nigerians but that may be just the tip of the iceberg. The commission's registrar, Ishaq Oloyede says six agencies are currently engaged in trying to recover money lost to corruption including fresh cases of fraud totalling N83m uncovered in its state offices in Kano, Edo, Kogi, Gombe and Plateau.

The agencies, according to Oloyede, are the police, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, the Department of State Services, the National Information Technology Development Agency and the Nigerian Communications Commission.

Oloyede said guilty parties were given the option of returning all stolen monies and avoiding prosecution while those who couldn't return what they stole were handed over to the authorities. The JAMB registrar however assured Nigerians that all the stolen funds would be recovered and paid to the purse of the Federal Government.

He said: “We have received cooperation from other agencies in monitoring the fraud and other sharp practices.  We would not have had the wherewithal to detect some of the things we are detecting if not for the cooperation of these agencies. We had no problem with all the officers who paid back what they had with them and they remained on their jobs. We (however) handed over those who wanted to be clever and felt they had stolen the money and were not ready to refund anything to the security agencies. Having handed them over (for prosecution), it has left my purview. What remains is for them to pay back the money. They had misused the privilege of payment without prosecution in the first place.” Two weeks ago, JAMB suspended its employee, Philomina Chieshe on account of the handling of N36m, which she claimed had been swallowed by a snake at the board’s office in Makurdi, Benue State.

Source: Punch