The Auditor General of the Federation has submitted a report to the Senate Public Account Committee indicting that the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board for awarding N7.3bn without recourse to due process.
The AuGoF, Anthony Ayine, submitted the report to the leadership of the Senate, which was later forwarded to the Chairman of SPAC, Senator Mathew Urhoghide.
The report also indicated that the contracts were awarded by the then JAMB Registrar between 2012 and 2013.
It indicted that the JAMB Registrar approved the contracts worth N7.1bn without due process and deliberately splitting contracts worth N247m in breach of an extant circular issued in March 2009.
The report partly reads, “Audit examination of procurement documents and other records of JAMB revealed that 21 payment vouchers for amount totaling N7.1bn were in respect of contracts approved by JAMB registrar outside his authorised approval threshold of N2.5m for supplies and N5m for works"
“This is contrary to the Bureau of Public Procurement-approved revised threshold for service-wide application as conveyed in circular No. SGF/OP/1/S.3/VIII/57 of 11 March 2009"
“The registrar/chief executive was requested to explain why he acted outside his authorised approval threshold and also to furnish evidence of ratification by the JAMB Tender Board, Ministerial Tenders Board or the Federal Executive Council"
“In response with reference number JAMB/FIN/127Vop.2/171 dated May 2016, the registrar stated that the awards were based on agreement entered into for a pre-determined period preceding the time of the audit and certain job cannot be subjected to general contracting"
“This response did not address the query"
“It was observed that several contracts were split in 2012 and 2013 accounting year in order to circumvent approval limits of the various authorities"
“These contracts were approved by the registrar who had no authority to do so"
But the Spokesperson for JAMB, Dr Fabian Benjamin, said, “No comment”