The board said it had earlier paid N3.5 billion to candidates by reducing N1,500 from the cost of ePINs sold to each candidate as directed by President Muhammadu Buhari. It said this brings its total remittances this year to over N7 billion.

The board also said it will remit more as soon as its operations are concluded and proper audit of its books is completed.

He said it had been the intention of the present leadership of the examination body to return to federal coffers, whatever is left unutilised from its operational funds.

“The immediate benefit of the move manifested in the reduction by President Muhammadu Buhari of the UTME Registration fee payable by candidates from N5000 to N3500 which entails the transfer of over N3b to candidates and guardians annually via the reduction in the cost of application documents,” he said.

According to Mr Benjamin, before the reduction in the cost of application ePINs, the agency had remitted billions of naira in 2017 and replicated same in subsequent years until President Buhari’s directive to give back to candidates a percentage of the cost of registration.

JAMB has been remitting consistently to the federal purse since the appointment of Ishaq Oloyede as registrar in August 2016.

Before his appointment, the agency never returned up to one per cent of N7 billion in any year.

The Federal Executive Council, FEC, in September 2016, therefore, ordered a probe into the administration of the past heads of JAMB and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, over what it called poor revenue remittance in the past.

The total amount JAMB remitted to the federal government coffers between 2010 and 2016 was N 50,752,544.

In 2017, the agency said it remitted more than N5 billion to government. In 2018, the board remitted N7.8 billion to the federal government.

In 2019, JAMB remitted N5 billion to the federal government’s purse after the conduct of its 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).