Professor Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede comes across as a workaholic to those who have had cause to relate to him personally or professionally. As a measure of his diligent attitude to work, he has consistently received commendations for his judicious management of resources in all the government agencies he presides over. Some attribute his transparent deployment of resources to his religious background as an Islamic scholar of international repute.
But it goes deeper than that, as others of similar religious persuasion have proved that it takes more than the hood to make the monk. He is the serving Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB). Before he mounted the saddle at that agency, it had become a bye-word for financial mismanagement and malfeasance.
It was alleged that rodents and snakes were the Board’s accounting officers, during which time millions of Naira could not be accounted for. Oloyede would have none of it as he brought renewed impetus to efforts to cleanse the Augean stable JAMB had become. His leadership style and drive at JAMB are unique.
He sanitised a once corruption-ridden public institution and transformed it into an enviable establishment, generating enough to self-finance its operations and remitting some to the federation account. He is known to have remitted billions of naira to the federal government abiding by the legal framework setting up the body. Since assumption of office, Oloyede has transformed JAMB into a reference po.