JAMB plans N6bn head office in Abuja

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has publicised plans to build a new headquarters in the Central Area of the nation’s capital, Abuja, in a mammoth project that will cost the sum of N6bn.

This plan was made known in Abuja on Thursday at an investigative hearing by the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts.

The hearing was organised concerning audit queries issued by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation against ministries, departments, and agencies of the Federal Government.

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The Director, Finance and Administration, JAMB, Mufutau Bello, who appeared before the committee, said the board has been saving N2bn annually since 2018 to raise the money and commence the project.

The head office of the examination body is presently located in the Bwari, headquarters of the Bwari Area Council.

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Bello said JAMB had realised N5.5bn so far, explaining that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic affected the internally generated revenue of the board in 2020.

“We are proposing to move our central headquarters to the Central Area (of Abuja). We have a plan of over N6bn but since we don’t collect subvention from the government for our overhead and capital (costs), every year, from 2018, we have been setting aside N2bn because our target is N6bn to be able to acquire our headquarters in the Central Area,” he said.

“The money is in our TSA (Treasury Single Account). We had a challenge in 2020 because of COVID; so, we could not realise our budget. So far, we have realised about 5.5bn.”

However, the Chairman of the committee, Oluwole Oke, faulted the decision to keep the money idle in the account.

“You cannot keep such money idling in an account. That is poor treasury management,” he stated.