New Era At JAMB As Oloyede Hands Over To Aina
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board will on Friday close one of the longest and most consequential chapters in its history, as its Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, formally transfers power to his successor, Professor Segun Aina, at a ceremony in Abuja.
The board confirmed that the handover holds on Friday, July 31, 2026, from 10am, with a live broadcast on its official social media platforms. In a notice issued on Wednesday, JAMB invited the public to witness what it described as a significant milestone in its leadership journey.
The event marks the expiry of Oloyede’s second and final term, which ends on July 31, and the commencement of Aina’s tenure. President Bola Tinubu approved the appointment in a statement by his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga. Aina is expected to resume on August 1, becoming JAMB’s sixth substantive Registrar.
Oloyede, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, was first appointed in 2016 by then President Muhammadu Buhari and reappointed for a second term in 2021. His decade at the helm reshaped the board’s public image, anchored on accountability, tighter admission monitoring and heavy investment in technology.
The financial record often cited in his favour is striking. Within his first year, JAMB remitted N7.8bn to the Federal Government, and between 2018 and the close of 2025 the board returned N29.4bn as operating surplus, even after reducing the price of its registration form. By contrast, records indicate the agency remitted roughly N50m to N60m in total across its first 38 years. During its 2026 budget defence before the Senate in February, JAMB projected N23.8bn in internally generated revenue and a N6bn remittance.
Registration figures also climbed sharply. The board processed 1,722,236 candidates across 642 computer based test centres in 2017 and about 2.2 million candidates in 966 centres by 2026.
The tenure was not without severe strain. The 2025 UTME was disrupted by a technical failure that Oloyede said affected 379,997 candidates, comprising 206,610 in 65 centres across Lagos and 173,387 in 92 centres in the South East. He publicly accepted responsibility, broke down in tears at a briefing, blamed the negligence of a hired service provider and ordered a resit for the affected candidates. The episode drew a resignation demand from the South East Caucus in the House of Representatives, which described it as a catastrophic institutional failure, though Oloyede rejected claims of ethnic bias and pressed on with corrective examinations.
Aina inherits both the gains and the unresolved vulnerabilities of that system. The Presidency described him as a distinguished academic and systems expert in national examination systems, digital infrastructure and public sector reform. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Kent, a Master’s in Internet Computing and Network Security and a PhD in Digital Signal Processing, both from Loughborough University, and a Senior Management Programme certificate from Lagos Business School.
According to Onanuga, Aina first encountered JAMB during his National Youth Service, which he completed in 2010, and has since built more than 15 years of experience advising federal and state governments on digital transformation and institutional reform. He has consulted for examination bodies including the National Examinations Council and the National Business and Technical Examinations Board on ICT systems and examination integrity, and belongs to professional bodies such as COREN, the Nigerian Society of Engineers, IEEE and the IET.
At 39, Aina is regarded as one of Nigeria’s youngest professors of computer engineering and will become the youngest Registrar in the board’s history. Tinubu expressed confidence that he would consolidate the reforms recorded under Oloyede and strengthen the board’s operations, even as attention turns to whether the incoming registrar can stabilise the examination technology that repeatedly tested his predecessor.