Ebun Francis || Shehu Sani, The senator representing Kaduna central, Shehu Sani on Tuesday dramatically visited the headquarters of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in Bwari, federal capital territory, with snake charmers.
The Senator apparently reacting to the alleged swallowing of the sum of N36m from the Benue office of JAMB by a mystery snake also presented snake repellents and chemicals to the board.
According to Sanni, the visit was to enable stakeholders to get to the bottom of the issues surrounding the money.
The Senator who expressed concern that such a huge sum of money was reported to have been swallowed by a snake, stated that if such a bizarre incident is not resolved Nigerians may wake up one day to hear that a snake has swallowed the country’s foreign reserve.
“I believe that the contribution I can make is to bring snake charmers from my constituency to the JAMB office and to help them fish out the snake and weed out snakes from their premises,” he said.
“Even if it is a spiritual matter, we believe that these people I brought are some of the best snake charmers in the country and they will help in arresting both physical and spiritual snakes if there has been any in the JAMB office.
“It is time Nigerians knew that there may be other dirty things happening in other places, but this place has exposed it for us. We know the truth and I’m very happy about that.”
Fabian Benjamin, the spokesman for JAMB, while responding to the Senator explained that on assumption of duty, Prof Oloyode, the current registrar discovered that there were accounting issues in the sale of scratch cards.
“We discovered a lot of loopholes. The registrar thereafter introduced PIN vending. After introducing the PIN vending, it was natural for him to call for an audit of the former use of scratch cards, Benjamin explained.
“After taking stock, it was discovered that in some offices, they could not account for what they sold.
“Ms. Philomena Chieshe was entrusted with a number of scratch cards which she sold, but N36m could not be accounted for.
“When asked, she actually said she sold them at the said amount and kept the money in the public vault. According to her, a snake swallowed the money.”