Some years back, in the aftermath of 9/11, when terrorists put humanity, especially air travellers, on edge, an interesting minor drama that featured me played out at the airport in faraway Houston, Texas, USA. That incident, sadly, was recreated, as it were, last week, in one of the latest episodes in the depressing drama of Nigeria’s pathetic life.
I was about to head out to London Heathrow from George Bush International Airport in Houston, enroute Abuja. In those unsettling days, protocols at American airports were exceptionally touchy. All passengers and flights, whether ingress or egress were subjected to extra security measures. Everyone understood.
When the announcement came for prospective passengers on the flight to head towards the boarding area from the outer lounge, a relatively beefy American security personnel materialized and asked passengers to head to the security doors; this way, and that way. As he was directing the traffic of passenger movement, he was requesting some to stand aside in a particular direction. Those, as it turned out, were to go through extra security check. No big deal. It did not take much effort, or time however, to see that virtually all those asked to stand aside for detailed security check were blacks.
The Nigerian hardly stays quiet, and out of trouble, even in a foreign land. Thinking about it now, it is difficult to understand how or why I had to insert myself into a business that was not really mine. Anyway, I protested to the security officer. I called his attention and asked him what was going on. His first response was “pardon?” I told him that almost all those he called aside for special checking were blacks. He responded; “Sir, mind what you are saying”. I doubled down and pointedly asked him to take a look, that he was selecting only blacks for extra security check. He responded; “Sir, be careful what you are saying. This is randomly done”.
I chuckled, then purposely allowed people to hear me sarcastically say, “What a random sampling!”. A number of the others in the “randomly” selected group of black passengers smiled. Others laughed. You needed to see the face of the security man. It turned as red as the face of a white person does when he is caught with his hand in the jar. Anyway, the passengers moved on.
Such, has always been the life of Nigerians. They reject and vehemently resist oppression and mistreatment in foreign land, but back in their own land, the system subjects them to the most degrading, repressive and unjust of order. How many do they resist?
That experience at George Bush Airport in Houston had receded in memory, until last week, when the Prof. Ishaq Oloyede -led Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) buckled to pressure and publicly admitted that the recent Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) it conducted, recorded technical glitches. The said glitches led to many innocent students failing an examination they would likely have passed creditably.
Alas, the technical glitches occurred “randomly” in only five Igbo states of the South East and areas of Lagos State known to be predominantly inhabited by the Igbo. What a country! How does any entity that cuts its nose to spite its face still expect to appear appealing?
For the past nine years, since 2016, Professor Ishaq Oloyede,70 years of age, has been at the helm of affairs at JAMB. He has, through this period, acquitted himself creditably. Oloyede has not only proved to be a decent public servant, he has cultivated and won substantial public confidence for the activities of the examination body. JAMB was not always believable. Indeed, it was once a cesspool of graft and shady contracts. Sadly now, for all that Oloyede may have worked to prove, JAMB has relapsed, through one monumental misdeed, into unreliability. And something worse.
It may not be easy to dismiss the public apologies of Prof, Oloyede for the 2025 UMTE debacle, especially with the tears he laced his apologies with. It is well and fine that as a leader, he took responsibility for the wrong done by his organisation. The truth however, is that the nature and import of the sabotage in the 2025 UMTE exceed what tears can wipe away. It will be simplistic to accept that his tears are enough to clean a blotch that is the latest mark of Nigeria’s darkening identity as a retrograde state.
This is one case where tears are not enough. Even then, the JAMB registrar may have cried for an entirely different, but equally grievous reason. Nigeria appears to be in the clutches of irredeemable self-destruction, deserving as much tears as can be shed for it. It is possible that Oloyede’s cried because his JAMB of has become another dirty Nigerian institution.
Let the truth be faced. What JAMB tried to put some coating on, as “technical error that compromised the integrity of the result from the 2025 UTME in 157 centres nationwide” was deeper than that. The incident bore the mark of a callous hit job that had a target location in mind. It was a premeditated attack that aimed to extend to the realm of education, the malignancy that has destroyed political leadership and hope of genuine progress in Nigeria. There was nothing nationwide about the UMTE sabotage.
Something criminal happened with the 2025 UMTE. It was, from all available indications, a programmed glitch, the equivalent of the random sampling of the racist airport security officer at Houston. If – and it is sadly if – Prof. Oloyede is exculpated from responsibility for the targeted sabotage that was visited on South East UMTE candidates for 2025, at home and in Lagos, the professor owes it a duty to the integrity he vows, to get to the root of the matter.
Oloyede should, have no inhibition against an independent technical panel of experts to investigate what happened and which office at JAMB did what? The report of the panel should be made public in the shortest possible time. Such action will, of course, not be characteristic of Nigeria of this day.
There are reports and allegations that the said glitches in the 2025 UMTE were identified much earlier by JAMB, yet the body continued with the examination and subsequently released results. In some exam centres, one of the papers did not have answers for the first ten questions. The candidates were instructed at the examination hall to jump and pass those questions. Yet, after JAMB proceeded to release the results, top government officials and defenders of evil, promptly commenced spins and justification of the anomaly. One line of justification of the large number of failures at the 2025 UMTE was that it showed that the government’s initiatives to tackle exam malpractices are yielding result. Pray, what are the initiatives to tackle exam malpractice and when were they launched?
Prof, Oloyede has not helped himself and JAMB by the hasty manner they set about to mount fresh UMTE last weekend in the South East. The haste smacks of attempt to cover up something. Now, there are troubling reports trailing that hasty attempt to conduct a fresh examination. Reports of further suspicious muddling and ‘disenfranchisement’ of several students characterized the so-called fresh UMTE.
As of last weekend, there were troubling reports of loss of contact with some students who travelled across states in the zone to new venues. Up till the morning of the fresh examination, venues were being change and reshuffled, leading to some students missing the fresh exam. What exactly is going on at JAMB concerning the South East?
All that the Igbo have been asking of Nigeria is a level playing field for all to contend. That has been too difficult for Nigeria to accept. The education sector has been one of the very few areas where fair contest in the form of examination still exist in the land, to some reasonable extent, even if excellent results are largely ignored in both admission into institutions of higher education and promotions in public institutions. Now, even a level playing field for national examination has come under threat. If Prof. Oloyede does not lead a robust charge to establish those responsible for the selective glitches that have undermined trust in the integrity of JAMB exams, his personal integrity will come into question as well.