JAMB To Build N6bn Headquarters In Abuja

The Joint Administration and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has proposed to build a new headquarters in the central area of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja for the sum of N6 billion.

The examination body, which is presently located in the Bwari area of the nation’s capital disclosed this when it appeared before the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives on Thursday.

The body appeared on account of the investigative hearing initiated by a query from the office of the Auditor General of the Federation over dwindling revenues to the Federal Government.

The Director, Finance and Accounts, Mufutau Bello, who appeared on behalf of JAMB, said they have been saving N2 billion annually since 2018 to raise the money to commence the project.

He said they had realized N5.5 billion so far; pointing out that the COVID-19 pandemic affected their internally generated revenue in 2020.

“We are proposing to move our central headquarters to the central area (of Abuja). We have a plan of over N6 billion but since we don’t collect subvention from the government for our overhead and capital, so every year from 2018 we have been setting aside N2 billion, because our target is N6 billion to be able to acquire our headquarters in the central area. The money is in our TSA, we had a challenge in 2020 because of COVID, so we could not realize our budget. So far we have realized about 5.5 billion,” he said.

Chairman of the Committee, Oluwole Oke, said it was not wise to keep such an amount of money idle without investing it.

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