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OPINION: JAMB, Glitches And An Inter-tribal War

Published

2 months ago

May 19, 2025

By Lasisi Olagunju

The enemy is behind everything that happens to anyone here. In electronics and computing, a glitch is an unexpected software or hardware malfunction. Here, you have your phone frozen or your app crashed, you respond cursing the devil that is responsible for the trouble. You suffer network failure, you hit or tap the desk and pray against the spirit of lost connections. Or you simply blame the village witch, and the next-door neighbour whose jealous, suspicious eyes you’ve been seeing in your dreams. You bind and curse them all —and all their generations.

At exactly 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday, May 2, 2023, thousands of students across China prepared to take the Advanced Placement (AP) Chinese Language and Culture exam. One after another, they logged into the AP testing platform. For some, the exam began smoothly—they managed to answer a few listening questions—then their screens abruptly froze. Like today’s dog expertly pursuing today’s hare, the obedient citizens of the tech world did what the manuals advised troubled users to do: log out and try again, standard troubleshooting step. Many logged out and attempted to sign back in. But the system told them no: “Access denied. This account is already in use.” Nothing they did resolved the glitch. They remained logged out and locked out – and stranded.

The experience was not a one-centre fiasco. The malfunction was widespread; students from over 700 high schools were impacted. A makeup examination was later organized for those affected.

China is home to 56 officially recognized ethnic groups—a fine mix of cultures, languages, and traditions. But when the AP Chinese exam system glitched, no one pointed fingers at anyone’s ethnicity. No teacher or senator screamed: “Glitch caused by majority Han to retard the progress of the Hui.” There was no binding the devil and cursing the enemy. The problem was simply taken for what it was —a glitch, a technical chaos.

JAMB discovered that an unfortunate glitch happened to a part of its 2025 exam and explained how it happened; it offered apologies and remedies. But some people say the JAMB glitch was not an accident; they say it was a carefully designed plot by the Yoruba, led by JAMB’s Professor Ishaq Oloyede to deny Igbo children university education.

Nigeria is an impossible country. Oloyede is an Egba man from Abeokuta, therefore he must be carrying out a Yoruba agenda against their historical southern rival across the Niger. That is what some people say in rooms and verandas and on rooftops. I gasped reading very enlightened people, even respected top media people, entering the fray, blasting the walls of reason.

Well, it turned out that the glitch affected more candidates in Lagos (a Yoruba state) than the total number of the victims in the South-East. In Lagos, there were 206,610 victim-candidates; the whole of the five South-East states had 173,397. Could the Yoruba have hated their neighbours so much that they would add their own part of the earth to the scorched? Only a suicide bomber would not mind inflicting more harm on himself than on his target. And suicide bombing is not a Western Nigerian delicacy.

Read the “moth in the hardware” story in the evolution epic of the computer. Anything machine can malfunction at any point and caused by anything. That is why it is called a machine, an invention by man. Read the Greek origin of the word and its long journey to today’s form and meaning.

The genius called Thomas Edison when he encountered technical hiccups which he called ‘bugs’ in his inventions, famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Science historians say Edison tackled the bugs and hiccups in his inventions through a combination of rigorous experimentation, documentation, and iterative problem-solving. I am almost sure that our scientists and engineers are part of this JAMB controversy, not as professionals proactively in search of solutions to future glitches, but as public or closet ethnic champions.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: The Shame Of Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa Road

I read a report credited to the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The chairman of ASUU-UNN, Comrade Óyibo Eze, told newsmen in Nsukka on Wednesday that the massive failure, which he claimed mostly affected candidates from the South-East, was a deliberate attempt by JAMB to stop children from the zone from getting higher education.

“JAMB knows that children from the South-East must score higher before they can get admission, whereas their counterparts in some parts of the country will use a 120 JAMB score to get admission to read medicine at universities in their area. In the JAMB recently released result, out of 1,955,069 candidates who sat for the 2025 examination, over 1.5 million candidates scored less than 200, and the majority of these are from the South -East and Lagos State, where many Igbos reside,” he said.

Nsukka’s ASUU reduced a national disaster to a glib tribal talk. It even added Lagos to its sphere of tribal influence. Jesus said: “It is finished.” Until I read that news report, I had thought that ASUU (of any branch) was what we thought it was: an association of intellectuals. Now we know. “If gold rusts, what shall iron do? For if a priest, upon whom we trust, be foul, no wonder a layman may yield to lust.” Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote those lines in ‘The Canterbury Tales’ apparently had ASUU-UNN in mind.

The union should have left such cheap tribal talk to arrogance of ignorance and those who revel in it. There is a reason why university teachers are called intellectuals. “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.” That was Albert Camus in ‘The Enigma of the Universe’ (1948). If you are called an intellectual, your scent must be self-awareness; your breath, critical thinking; your thoughts, introspection. Psychologist John H. Flavell called it meta-cognition — thinking about thinking. A union of university teachers which failed to question its own assumptions, and neglected an analysis of its reasoning before taking a stand on a key national issue puts all branches of knowledge to shame.

A teacher should never be found “in the thick of the hoi polloi”, saying what the unwashed, the unthinking are saying. Or, maybe we overrate some people. Or, should I say William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the US ‘National Review’ magazine, was right in his popular political preference for the crowd over the caste of the learned: “I’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University.” If anyone holds that same opinion today of the Nigerian ivory tower, the person would be justified.

I have my own grouse with JAMB, and this is on the unresolved issue of those it calls underage candidates. I wrote about it last year. Their results are withheld this year. There is a subsisting court judgment which nullified the age restriction policy authored by JAMB. The order issued by the Delta State High Court, to the best of my knowledge, has not been upturned by any higher court. Besides, if you would not give these young people admission, you should have programmed your system not to accept their applications, fees and all. So, if there would be an uproar, it should be for victims of that policy. What we have on air, instead, is a war of tribes and tongues over a glitch that has extracted apologies from the JAMB boss and remedies given the victims.

Shakespeare’s King Lear says “I am a man/More sinn’d against than sinning.”

We should have enough of people reading tribal meanings into anything and everything they are involved in. What I write here is a debugging attempt, an effort at telling ethnic moths to remove themselves from our relays; an attempt at protecting the system from human glitches.

Or, maybe we should just pack up Nigeria since we cannot live a minute without threatening each other. And over what? Over glitches that can happen even under an angel’s watch.

News

BREAKING: Tinubu Appoints New Federal Fire Service Boss

Published

3 hours ago

July 30, 2025

Editor

President Bola Tinubu has approved the appointment of Adeyemi Olumode, as the new Federal Fire Service, FFS, Controller-General.

The appointment was announced on Wednesday on behalf of the Federal Government by retired Maj.-Gen Abdulmalik Jubril, Secretary of the Civil, Defence, Correctional, Fire and Immigration Services Board, CDCFIB.

Jubril said the appointment followed the retirement of the current Controller-General, Abdulganiyu Jaji, on August 13.

Jaji is retiring upon attaining the age of 60 by August 13.

Jibril further disclosed said that Adeyemi Olumode is qualified for the position, having attended and passed all mandatory in-service training, Command courses as well as other courses within and outside the country.

“He brings a wealth of experience to his new role, having transferred his service from the FCT Fire Service to the Federal Fire Service and grown to the rank of DCG in the Human Resource Directorate of the Service Headquarters.

“He has served in various capacities and is equally a member/fellow of the following professional associations including Association of National Accountants of Nigeria, ANAN, Institute of Corporate Administration of Nigeria, Institute of Public Administration of Nigeria and Chartered Institute of Treasury Management of Nigeria.”

News

[OPINION] Northern Amnesia: Governor Sani, The Table Shaker

Published

4 hours ago

July 30, 2025

Editor

By Israel Adebiyi

“When truth is buried underground, it grows, it chokes, it gathers such explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it.”
— Émile Zola

There’s a kind of silence that settles over the land after years of failure. A silence made of shame, denial, and carefully chosen half-truths. In Northern Nigeria, that silence has become an institution — polite, predictable, and profoundly dangerous.

Then came Uba Sani — with words that cut through like harmattan wind.

At a recent citizen engagement summit in Kaduna, Governor Uba Sani did what few northern politicians have ever dared. He faced the region and told it the truth: “We failed our people.” Not they. We. All of us who have held power in the North in the past two decades, he said, must offer the people an apology.

In that single moment, he shattered the convenient forgetfulness the North has grown used to. He didn’t call out Abuja. He didn’t drag the South. He didn’t blame some vague colonial past or “outsiders.” He pointed the finger inward — and included himself.

That is no small thing. That is not politics. That is an act of courage.

Because what Governor Sani spoke to is not just political miscalculation. It’s a generational betrayal. A betrayal that has left too many Northern children unschooled, too many women dying in childbirth, too many communities in darkness, and too many homes listening for the next gunshot.

Let’s stop for a moment and look at the evidence — not the emotion, but the math.

According to the 2022 National Multidimensional Poverty Index, nine of the ten poorest states in Nigeria are in the North. In Sokoto, over 90% of people live in poverty. Kebbi, Zamfara, Jigawa — same story. We’re not just failing; we’ve normalized failure.

And yet, this is the region that has held the most power in Nigeria since independence. Presidents. Military heads of state. Senators. Generals. Governors. Ministers. National Security Advisers. We’ve produced them all. But not the outcomes.

We’ve built palaces in Abuja, but not a working school in Shinkafi. We’ve padded budgets but abandoned hospitals in Birnin Kebbi. In some states, over 60% of children aged 6–15 have never seen the inside of a classroom. What kind of leadership allows this?

Northern mothers still die in delivery rooms at three times the national average, according to the latest NDHS report. Some rural health centres don’t even have paracetamol. The elites fly abroad. The poor bury their dead.

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Security? Forget it. From Zamfara to Katsina to Niger, bandits have made homes out of forests. Whole villages are ghost towns. And yet, most of the top military chiefs in the last decade came from this region. Who, then, is to blame?

Let’s talk money. The North is land-rich but cash-poor. While Lagos alone contributes over 30% to Nigeria’s GDP, most northern states struggle to hit 1%. But the same northern governors go cap-in-hand for federal allocation and call it development. Where are the industries? Where is the productivity?

This is what Sani is shaking — a region that has grown comfortable with underdevelopment and allergic to self-reflection.

Some elites have pushed back, of course. Former senators and political juggernauts who built their careers on recycled loyalty have tried to downplay his remarks. They say he was too harsh. That he forgot their “service”. That he shouldn’t “wash dirty linen in public.”

But if that linen hasn’t been washed for 40 years, where should it be aired?

Let’s be honest — it is easier to blame Buhari, or Tinubu, or the South. But Sani refuses the easy route. He says: we, the North, are not victims here. We are architects of our own decline.

He refuses to play the amnesia game.

You can feel the discomfort in the air. He has stepped on toes — and many of those toes wear agbadas. But the truth is not about comfort. It’s about course correction.

This isn’t about just Uba Sani. It’s about whether the North still has the capacity to face its reflection. To see the rot — and clean house. To stop building dynasties and start building schools. To stop naming roads after ancestors and start giving roads to rural farmers.

Too many of our children are stuck in almajiri cycles while the children of the elite occupy UK universities. Too many of our mothers die in labor while wives of past governors set up foundations for photo-ops. Too many old names have stayed too long — and are grooming their sons for the throne.

That is what Governor Sani is fighting: not just silence, but the inheritance of silence.

He says, “Let’s apologise.” But apology alone is not enough. It must be backed with a plan. A Marshall Plan for the North — real investment, not campaign slogans. Functional education, not workshops. Security that protects, not retaliates. Jobs that empower, not enslave.

It must come with the rethinking of what power is: not title, not convoy, not prayer photos — but legacy measured in lives changed, not lives lost.

Governor Sani’s voice may be lonely now. But history listens to such voices. And perhaps, just perhaps, in that lone voice, the North might find a new beginning.

Because silence, when it becomes tradition, is nothing but consent.

And now, one man has dared to shout.

News

Edo Assures Pensioners Of Improved Welfare, Universal Health Coverage

Published

5 hours ago

July 30, 2025

Editor

The government of Edo State has assured pensioners in the state of improved welfare and universal health coverage.

The state deputy governor, Hon. Dennis Idahosa gave the assurance in Benin on Tuesday, during a courtesy visit to his office by members of the Edo State Chapter of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP).

In a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr Friday Aghedo, Idahosa assured the pensioners of Monday Okpebholo’s led administration commitment to improving on the welfare of all citizens.

Idahosa said that the government remains upbeat and committed toward representing the interest of pensioners.

“The Governor is committed towards the welfare of the pensioners of Edo State,” he stated.

Idahosa, who reacted to a request concerning the need to expedite payments of outstanding arrears to already screened pensioners cutting across local government and state level, pointed out, “The Governor is keen at clearing all outstanding arrears.”

Simirlarly, the assured that the pensioners of benefitting from the state universal health coverage.

He concluded with the assurance that the governor’s work would soon be visible to all across the state.

The State Chairman of Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), Comrade Samuel Okhuelegbe, who spoke on behalf of his executive, enumerated challenges of the union, which includes meager amount received as pension

He commended the state government for setting up a committee to review the Contributory Pension Scheme.

“The essence is to narrow the yawning gap in monthly pensions between counterparts, under the contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) as well as define benefits of the scheme.

“Though the report of the committee has long been submitted, the final outcome of the report should be considered in the interest of affected pensioners,” he appealed

He, however, sued for improved benefits for retirees going by the improved minimum wage as applicable to workers in Edo State.