By Tunji Adegboyega
Hullabaloo over UTME glitch because of the superhuman heights he has taken JAMB. We saw worse scenarios before.
Professor Ishaq Oloyede, the registrar/chief executive of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), knew what he was saying when he appropriately titled the speech he delivered at the press briefing he held last week Wednesday, on the technical glitch that happened in some centres during the last Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), “Man proposes, God disposes”.
As a former vice-chancellor, Oloyede had addressed many press conferences. He had also addressed many press conferences in his present capacity. He had spoken to the ‘gentlemen’ of the press in his several other private or official capacities.
But the press conference of May 14 was of a different kind. It’s good music when you come prepared with record achievements that you want newsmen to tell the world. It’s good music when you won national or international accolades for exemplary performance. Good music when you are to be showcased as a man who has breathed life afresh into an institution that was on the brink of collapse.
But it’s something else when all eyes are on you for the wrong reason. This is especially so for a man who has worked conscientiously to earn whatever he has become today. It is the more so for a man that has come to be known as ‘Mr Integrity’ because he cares about his image.
The saying that when you don’t plan before embarking on a project, you have only planned to fail is an acclaimed truism.
In terms of preparations, JAMB had done what was humanly possible to ensure a hitch-free 2025 UTME. Realising that its workers cannot do the job alone, JAMB brought in a lot of people of integrity across board to ensure a smooth conduct of the examination, and as part of its quality assurance measures.
As Oloyede said at the press briefing, “There are peace monitors, of 41 women of substance who are or have been principal officers of Nigerian universities; we have chief external examiners (CEEs), who are vice-chancellors, rectors and provosts of universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. Each state also has chief technical adviser, a reputable professor who is an expert in computing and cybersecurity.
“We have peace monitors, civil society group, equal opportunity group, the general monitors group, high-powered opinion leaders, the roving group, technical advisors group and the virtues vanguards. All of these groups play critical roles and complement our staff in ensuring quality and troubleshooting challenges.”
That was for adhoc personnel.
What of technology? If we begin talking about this, we won’t ever finish because it is the backbone of whatever Oloyede has achieved in JAMB, after God.
So, how do you now explain that 379,997 of about 1.9 million candidates who sat for the exam that you had so elaborately prepared for are to resit the same examination?
That is the big question. And that must have been the basis of Oloyede’s ‘man proposes, God disposes’.
The answer was found in discrepancies linked to faulty server updates in JAMB’s Lagos and south-east (Owerri zone) comprising the five South-east states: Abia, Enugu, Imo, Ebonyi and Anambra, which led to the failure to upload candidates’ responses during the first three days of the examination. Unfortunately, this was not detected before the results were released.
The mass failure that trailed the release of the result on May 9 was attributed to this avoidable lapse. More than 78 per cent of candidates scored less than 200 points out of the 400 maximum obtainable points.
There was public outcry and JAMB consequently emplaced a committee of various examination and educational experts to review the results. It was in the process that the glitch was discovered and Oloyede publicly accepted responsibility for the technical error and tendered an unreserved apology to the nation.
“As registrar of JAMB, I hold myself personally responsible, including for the negligence of the service provider. I unreservedly apologise for it,” Oloyede said, tears in his eyes.
Agreed, people are usually interested in result, not efforts. Again, the gravity of what happened notwithstanding, the apology should do. After all nobody is perfect. Even if such a glitch occurred elsewhere, the best that would be ordered is a retake of the examination in the affected centres, and not a wholesale cancellation of the result as some people were canvassing, since the glitch was not nationwide.
But, what do we see? A barrage of criticisms calling for Oloyede’s head in a golden plate. It is refreshing though that some of the professionals in the social media space did report and analyse the incident professionally.
Really, sometimes one is usually at sea to decipher certain things, especially where Oloyede’s tenure in JAMB is concerned. One finds it difficult to differentiate between genuine critics of the board and those who do so because they are part of the people that Oloyede’s stringent policies have denied the opportunity of fleecing either the hapless candidates through all manner of illegalities, or even the country.
There is the third group that is neither here nor there. This comprises armchair critics who think the only way they can be relevant is to criticise the system, whatever happens. To them nothing good can come out of the country and when it does; it must have been a mistake.
But it is unfortunate that the technical glitch of 2025 UTME provided an ample reminder for people who never saw anything good in either the government or JAMB under Oloyede to reopen the debate on the huge remittances that he has been making to the federal purse since his assumption of office. To date, that is said to be over N50 billion in seven years, a thing the Federal Government has commended JAMB for.
This is despite the fact that Oloyede has reduced the application fees for UTME forms by N1,500. To date, he has never thought of increasing it despite the vicissitudes of the nation’s economy.
The critics keep saying he should still reduce the fees to help poor parents even when we can see some of the benefits the money has been spent on through the awards the board organises every year to encourage the higher institutions to keep to the rules.
Curiously, such critics are mum about those who either embezzled or misapplied what Oloyede has been remitting to the government since the board came into existence in 1978.
What a country!
Under him, JAMB has demonstrated uncommon courage in enhancing accountability, transparency, and openness in its financial practices by making public its income and expenditure profiles weekly since 2017. How many government agencies can do such?
All of these are aside the technology that he has leveraged on to improve the fortunes of JAMB and the integrity of its examinations.
One thing many of us, including Oloyede himself, may not realise is the fact that he is a victim of his own standard. Many things that people would simply have shrugged off as one of those things in the dark years of the board have now become cornerstone expectations from his JAMB.
And the brickbats, could either come as genuine friendly fire from people who feel, ‘no, this man has gone past this kind of mistake’. Or from people who, as I said earlier, Oloyede’s policies have deprived the opportunity of fleecing candidates or the country, who would want to seize a moment like this to extract their pound of flesh from him. To such disgruntled elements, Oloyede is an irritant and pollutant whose ouster from the system they would gladly embrace and or orchestrate.
I said this not to make light of the UTME glitch but to just put the record straight.
Indeed, while putting this piece together on Thursday, I saw a piece written by someone who said he scored 90 something in his UTME and that when his father wrote JAMB because he trusted in his ability to have done better in the exam, his mark was changed to over 200. I was taken aback. I thought it was part of the fallout of the current UTME, only for me to read down the line that that happened about 24 years ago! That was where we were coming from with regards to JAMB and UTME. Sadly, we have forgotten so soon. These days, UTME is held without many people, except those directly concerned, knowing.
The chaos of the past whereby candidates would be running from pillar to post in search of their centres, the very many problems associated with the manual conduct of the examination, etc. have since Oloyede’s coming become things of the past.
Oloyede has since his appointment been conducting UTME yearly. He had been vice-chancellor in one of the country’s top notch universities, among others. So, he knows his onion. He has international recognition for his handling of his assignment as JAMB registrar and, in fairness to him, his performance every year has always been better than the previous year.
But it is gratifying that some institutions and individuals have shown solidarity with him at this point in time. He needs such; the country needs such. Otherwise, we would be inadvertently yielding the space to the vocal critics who are in the minority, thus giving the impression that they are in the majority. Ours is a country with too many critics, many of who cannot administer a single classroom but they are fast at calling for the heads of otherwise hard-working Nigerians simply because of one mistake or grouse, or the other.
It is sad that one candidate, Faith Opesusi, took poison allegedly over her ‘failure’ in the mass failure and died. Ordinarily one would only have stopped at sympathising with her parents and relatives, but it is also good to counsel both parents and candidates over an incident like this. In this kind of situation, the youths need counselling.
If there was mass failure in UTME as it happened, JAMB and the tertiary institutions would not go to America or South Africa to look for students. They would still have to admit students from those that ‘failed’. If it meant lowering further the requirements, it would be done. That was what happened as it was reported that her admission letter came shortly after she had committed suicide. Many great people in the world had cause to resit some examinations several times before finally making it. We need to drive the fact that an examination is not always a true test of one’s ability into their heads.
This is not an occasion to dwell extensively on why standards are falling in many of our schools, because mischief makers could term it as dancing on the grave of the poor girl. Mischief-making has no limit in our clime.
Suffice it to advise JAMB to use the technical glitch of the exams to reflect, once again, on its processes. It is sad that an examination that the board had envisaged as a poster exam has been marred by this avoidable human error.
At 70, going to 71, Oloyede should know that such is
