Kaduna Central Senator Shehu Sani guested in Tuesday morning at the head office of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, in Abuja with a surprise package: packs of anti-snake venom and a tribe of snake charmers.
The senator told JAMB Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede that he brought the items to help fish out snakes that swallowed N36 million in JAMB’s Makurdi’ s office as reported on Monday.
The exams board said it suspended a staffer Philomena Chieshe who made the claim.
“It is my concern that such a huge amount of money is reported to have been swallowed by a snake. I believe the contribution I can make is to bring snake charmers from my constituency to the JAMB office to help them fish out the snake or weed out snakes from their premises,”. Sani told the registrar who was amused by Sani’s practical joke.
“If a snake can actually swallow N36 million one day we may wake up in this country to see that a snake has swallowed our foreign reserve or it has swallowed money that was gathered in the TSA.”
One of the snake charmers Tasiu Abdulrasheed said he has been taming serpents for 20 years, and he has never heard the carnivorous reptile enjoyed snacking on cash.
According to JAMB’s spokesperson Fabian Benjamin, there are more rib-cracking fables like that.
“There was even a case in Nasarawa when a staff claimed that on his way to come and submit the scratch card, he had an accident and the car got burnt with the scratch cards,” he said.
“The cards have numbers and when we checked we found out that those cards were used.
There was another staff that said his signature was forged. He agreed that it was his signature but he wasn’t the one that signed and did not collect the scratch cards. We have many issues like that but all of them have been queried, they appeared before the disciplinary committee, they were interrogated. A report has been written. Once that report has been approved, we will be commended for their dismissal and prosecution.”
Chieshe is currently undergoing disciplinary procedures and would be handed over to security agencies after the minister’s approval.