Following the ‘failure’ of President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to announce either his replacement or reappointment, the registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Is-haq Oloyede, has handed over the baton of leadership to the agency’s director of information technology services, Fabian Okoro.
Mr Okoro, who joined JAMB in 1993 as a programmer and was appointed a deputy director in 2018, is said to be the most senior director in the establishment.
Other directors, including those of quality assurance department, and test development department, Mabel Egberaku and David Akanbi respectively, who also joined the agency in 1993, were reportedly appointed directors after Mr Okoro.
Also, the JAMB’s director of test administration, Yusuf Lawal, who was employed by the agency in 1989, is said to be junior to Mr Okoro in ranking.
The former registrar’s decision to hand over to Mr Okoro, followed the directive by the ministry of education that all the concerned chief executives should hand over to the most senior directors in their agencies.
Mr Oloyede, who was appointed as the registrar of JAMB on August 1, 2016, and inaugurated a day after, replaced a professor of measurement, Dibu Ojerinde, now embattled.
Mr Ojerinde is currently facing trial for financial misappropriation allegedly perpetrated while he held sway as the JAMB’s helmsman and during his reign at the National Examination Council (NECO).
Mr Oloyede, who completed his five-year term of office at the weekend, has been praised by many for reportedly turning around the examination body, especially in the areas of financial discipline, accountability and war against examination malpractices.
A 1992 graduate of Computer Science at the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA), Mr Okoro holds a Master of Science in Computer Science with option of internet computing from the University of Bedfordshire, United Kingdom in 2007.
After working for JAMB as a programmer for three years, the new acting registrar was promoted as a senior programme in 1996 and became a chief system analyst in 2002 and an assistant director in 2006.
He is said to have contributed significantly to the reform in the information technology unit of the examination body having received nudge and support from Mr Oloyede who reportedly brought new innovations to the body’s operations since his appointment five years ago.
As of Monday morning, it is not clear whether Mr Buhari will reappoint the much-celebrated registrar as the education ministry has kept mute on the matter.
According to insiders at the ministry who do not want to be quoted, the ministry’s permanent secretary, Sonny Echono, on Friday, had sent a memo to all chief executive officers, who have spent five years as executive officers, instructing them to hand over to the most senior directors in the affected agencies.
But the spokesperson for the ministry, Ben Goong, has said the minister will break his silence on the matter “in the coming days.”
Speaking on the telephone with our reporter, Mr Goong said the rule is clear about the tenure of executive officers of agencies of government and that the situation in the affected agencies under the education ministry, could not be different.
He said; “If the procedure of appointment specifies the tenure of appointment of a chief executive, you should always expect that where there is room for reappointment it can be expected and where it is not expected, a replacement would be announced.
“But the minister will make a statement on it in the coming days.”
There are, however, 13 other chief executive officers under the ministry of education who were sworn in alongside Mr Oloyede on August 2, 2016, and now share the same fate with the former registrar.
The other appointees whose tenure also ended at the weekend, alongside that of Mr Oloyede, include those of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Abubakar Rasheed; Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria (TRC), Josiah Ajiboye; National Mathematical Centre, Steven Onuah; Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Hameed Boboyi; National Business and Technical Examination Board (NABTEB), Ifeoma Isiugo-Abanihe, and Garba Azare of the National Teachers Institute (NTI).
Also affected are Michael Afolabi of the Librarian Registration Council of Nigeria (LRCN); Chinyere Ohiri-Aniche of the National Institute of Nigerian Languages; Lillian Salami of the Nigerian Institute for Educational Planning and Administration, Lanre Aina of National Library of Nigeria, Abba Haladu of the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education and Bashir Usman of Nomadic Education Commission.
