TheCable

Shehu Sani, senator representing Kaduna central, stormed the headquarters of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in Bwari, federal capital territory, with snake charmers, on Tuesday.

Sani also presented snake repellents and chemicals to the board.

He said the visit was to enable stakeholders to get to the bottom of the issues surrounding the reported case of missing N36 million from the JAMB office in Makurdi, Benue state.

One Philomena Chieshe, a sales clerk in the Markurdi JAMB office, had said she could not account for the N36 million she made in previous years before the abolition of scratch cards.

She reportedly said a “mysterious snake” swallowed the money.

At the board’s headquarters, Sani lamented that it was of concern that such a huge sum of money was reported to have been swallowed by a snake.

“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.

He said if a snake could actually swallow N36 million, one day, Nigerians might wake up to say that a snake had swallowed the country’s foreign reserve.

The senator added: “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.”

Responding, Fabian Benjamin, spokessman for JAMB, explained that on assumption of duty, the incumbent registrar discovered that there were loopholes in the sale of scratch cards.

He said: “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.

“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.”