The Commission however listed certain conditions to be met before being removed prominent among which is to review the examination fees upward.
JAMB registrar, Ishaq Oloyede disclosed this on Wednesday when he appeared before the house of representatives committee on finance at the interactive session on the 2023-2025 medium-term expenditure framework (MTEF).
“They actually provide some support for the institution because students pay some token as registration fees and from it, they bear the responsibility of salaries and provide some succour.
“We are comfortable to be taken off the budget but there are conditions.
“One of the conditions, for example, when students registered in 2016, we collected N5,000 and that had been on for five years before I joined.
“When we came in, we remitted N7.5 billion. We felt it was too much and approached the federal government to reduce the fees. We have not added a kobo since.
“We approached the federal government and they agreed that we should reduce the cost by 30 percent.
“We effected that 30 percent reduction and until today, we have not increased the cost.
“At that time, some examination bodies were charging N13,000 and today, they are charging about N20,000 because of the cost involved. But we have not increased our own by one kobo.
“Before now, people were buying the form unofficially at exorbitant cost because it was being hoarded.
“That is not possible right now, he said.
The professor of Islamic studies added that if JAMB must exit budgetary allocation it “must be allowed to fix a new price for the form and return to the old price of N5,000.
“For example, if we fix N10,000 for the form, nobody will ask the federal government for a kobo.
” I am not aware of anywhere in the world, except maybe Finland, that charges as low as JAMB is charging.
“In Finland, we know that everything is free.
“We are hearing that you are planning to borrow billions. We are all going to sink at the end of the day.
“If there is any way anybody believes he can save this country, we should start doing that.
“The earlier we start, the better for us”, he added.
