At least seven officials of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) are currently serving an indefinite suspension following a fraud of N20 million discovered to have been perpetrated by them. CEOAFRICA source  reliably gathered that the N20 million is an admission proceeds from six different universities, which was ought to be paid to the Board’s account, but was diverted by the officials involved into their private accounts.

A source within JAMB revealed to our correspondent that the management of the Board has already invited operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate those indicted.

According to him, the Board receives from all tertiary institutions certain amount of money from candidates given admission by those institutions through its matriculation examinations and such money is paid into its account through its various officers designated for that purpose.

But a staff of Quality Assurance Department of the Board whose name was simply given as Tunde, the source revealed, issued receipts in collaboration with some staff of the Board’s Department Store to a certain university’s Admission Officer who had come to make payment on behalf of his school. “He gave the admission officer about N1 million and issued receipt, but didn’t remit the money into JAMB’s account.

But you know that the Board has the record of all candidates given admission every year by all the institutions and also knows the expected revenue from each institution that admitted candidates through its examination.

“But he went to the Store with the help of other staff, got the receipt, but did not record it. And as you are aware, the university that made the payment has been issued receipt as evidence of payment. His name is Tunde in Quality Assurance Department; he is also called Panel Secretary. “He and about six other staff involved have been suspended when management discovered the fraud. A probe panel has been set up while EFCC has also been invited,” the source said.

This is coming less than a month after six zonal coordinators of JAMB were penalised for their involvement in various irregularities that marred the conduct of 2016 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME). About six top officials of the Board were demoted for their role in some examination malpractices that greeted the last UTME.

When contacted, the Public Relations Officer of JAMB, Fabian Benjamin, said he was not aware of such incident within the Board even as he did not deny that tertiary institutions make payments per student on admission to JAMB.

He, however, pleaded for some hours to investigate and asked our correspondent to call back. But when he was called back after about two hours, the JAMB spokesman, who did not pick calls to his telephone, replied through an SMS, that he was in a meeting but couldn’t confirm the N20 million scam. “In a meeting. Asked but nobody could confirm that,” his SMS reads.