January 10, 2022

The Editorial Board of NextMoney, Nigeria’s authoritative financial magazine, has selected the Registrar/Chief Executive Officer of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Is’haq Olanrewaju Oloyede, as Person of the Year 2021.

The selection of Oloyede as NextMoney Person of the Year is informed by his relentless and uncompromising pursuit of academic excellence in Nigeria, and his unwavering commitment to transparency and accountability in public service.

As Vice Chancellor at the University of Ilorin (Unilorin), Oloyede pursued academic excellence as though his whole life depended on it. Concomitantly, Unilorin became the most sought-after institution by candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria. And soaring on the wings of academic excellence feathered by him, Unilorin’s ranking among world universities has remained on the upward trajectory.

As Registrar/Chief Executive of JAMB, Oloyede is leaving no stone unturned as he relentlessly and avowedly pursues academic excellence by ensuring that admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria is transparent and credible.

Quietly and steadily, he is leading a revolution in the Nigerian educational system, ostensibly with the objective of implanting academic excellence especially at the tertiary level of education in Nigeria. The revolution he is leading ensures that no candidate without the requisite academic achievements finds himself/herself on the campus of any tertiary institution in the country as a student. He is prosecuting this revolution by conducting very credible, transparent and fraud-free Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), and by ensuring that admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria is based first and foremost on merit.

Oloyede was appointed as Registrar/Chief Executive of JAMB by President Muhammadu Buhari in August, 2015, for a term of five years in the first instance. He was reappointed for a second term of five years in 2021, based on his outstanding performance during his first term.

Five years or so down the line, Oloyede has not only turned around JAMB, but has also clearly indicated that he will take it to the very height  of international standard and make it non-secondus in managing admissions into higher institutions of learning in Nigeria.

Quite significant in his list of achievements so far is JAMB’s new sense of public accountability and transparency manifesting in annual remittance of surplus revenue to the Federal Government in the last five years – a phenomenon not associated with the Board in the past decades. With this, JAMB has become a role model in public accountability, transparency and effective management and administration of human and material resources.

Another significant achievement of Oloyede is the introduction of technology in the conduct of the annual Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and administration of admission processes. Through this revolutionary approach, all the embarrassing examination malpractices hitherto associated with UTME are now becoming historical footnotes.

With the introduction of the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), the renowned academician has cleaned up the Augean Stable of admission process into higher institutions of learning in the country. With CAPS, the issue of illegal admissions has been rolled into the realm of history. This is definitely impacting the quality of students admitted into the country’s tertiary institutions. The ultimate outcome will be the production of academically sound graduates who can contribute meaningfully to Nigeria’s economic growth and development.

In the forthcoming special edition of NextMoney, the long list of achievements of Professor Is’haq Oloyede will be unveiled,