And Professor Ishaq Oloyede wept. What would make this 70-year-old Registrar of Nigeria’s Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) weep openly in public? When he got reappointed for the second term in that office, people clapped for him. When he clocked three scores and ten, people thanked God for his life. These are pieces of evidence that many people were happy for the work that he has been doing at JAMB. So, why would such a man, held in very high esteem by lots of people, choose to weep in public?
His action can be compared to the antics of an old woman who runs out naked from her residence. There are two explanations given in folklore. It is either the woman has lost her snuff box or her grandson. Oloyede has not lost his snuff box since he doesn’t have one in the first place. He doesn’t have a snuff box because he does not indulge in such matters. He has also not lost his grandson, otherwise he would have said so.
Why Oloyede wept was because JAMB, an institution that he has nurtured for several years now to be a reputable and respected institution, has just fallen below its own standard of performance. What went wrong was that in this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) 379, 997 candidates out of 1.9 million candidates failed the examination. When there was a public outcry, JAMB decided to do an investigation. The investigation showed that there was something wrong.
Oloyede decided to address the matter at a press conference on May 14, 2025. He told the public, blow by blow, what JAMB, on his watch, had been doing over the years to deliver an efficient service to the public. These steps include innovations and reforms, introduction of mock examinations, and the appointment of experts in cybersecurity and software development whose responsibility was to keep an eagle eye on the activities of JAMB. At the end of the press conference, he accepted responsibility for the problem.
He said: “Despite being able to identify the sources of the problem and the affected centres, we are conscious of the painful damage it has inflicted on the reputation of JAMB. As Registrar of JAMB, I hold myself personally responsible, including the negligence of the service provider; and I unreservedly apologise for it and on the trauma that it has subjected affected Nigerians to, directly and indirectly. It is our culture to admit errors because we know that in spite of the best of our efforts, we are human, we are not perfect. The only consolation we have in this case is that it is just one of the service providers that did not do well.”
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Some people are of the view that it takes courage for one to accept his mistakes and to apologise. Oloyede admitted the mistakes and apologised unreservedly to Nigerians. That is a courageous act. Some others who are trying to ethnicise the problem think that he was targeting Igbos and he should resign. I am not surprised because it seems it has become the norm that in this country every problem is often coloured with either tribe or religion or region.
In this particular case, there were also problems in Lagos but some people prefer to ignore that so that their theory of ethnicity can hold water. I have known Oloyede for some time now and I find nothing in his utterances or behaviour that can lead me to believe that he is an ethnic or religious irredentist. I consider him to be a fair-minded person, and a public servant who believes in justice, equity, transparency and accountability.
He publishes every week in JAMB’s bulletin a statement of JAMB’s income and expenditure for public scrutiny. He also holds regular public sessions with stakeholders, including the media, educationists and civil society officials, where he personally makes detailed presentations on JAMB and answers questions. That is solid evidence of transparency and accountability. How many public officials do that on a regular basis in Nigeria? I do not know, but they must be pretty few and they probably do so only when they have problems that they need to win the favour of the public on.
Corruption has been a major problem in governance in Nigeria since independence. But since he took over as the JAMB Registrar, Oloyede has confronted the problem frontally. Before he stepped into JAMB, the story was that JAMB’s money, which was collected from the sale of scratch cards, was being swallowed in the JAMB office by snakes and reptiles. Oloyede charmed these snakes and they no longer swallowed JAMB’s money. JAMB’s money stayed only in JAMB’s wallets, not in the stomach of snakes. There was a significant difference in the management of JAMB’s funds. For some 38 years of its existence, JAMB was able to remit to the coffers of the Federal Government about N50 million only. But in the last nine years or so, Oloyede has remitted to the Federal Government about N55 billion. And JAMB, which was not created as a cash cow, has become that, thanks to the excellent money management methods of Oloyede.
We learn that the Department of State Services and the Police have arrested 21 suspects in the hacking of JAMB’s system. The identities of the suspects have not been disclosed yet but it is likely that they will come from within JAMB and outside it. Their motives may include trying to damage JAMB’s reputation, favour some candidates, mar the fortunes of some candidates, or to make some money from the system. The security personnel must follow every possible lead. Outsiders cannot destroy JAMB’s system without the cooperation and support of insiders.
My experience is that in almost every system there are always saboteurs. When I was the Chief Executive Officer of Newswatch, we bought a colour separation machine which we used for our two publications. But the machine was not fully utilised. We agreed that the staff of the unit can canvass for business so that we can make some money from the machine. For more than a year, the staff kept telling us that there was no business. An informant told me that the staff always came on Sundays to do private business on the machine and the money went into their pockets. One Sunday, I drove to the office and went straight to the colour separation unit. I saw one of the staff working on the machine. I asked whether the job was paid for. He said ‘No,’ but that he was just helping his pastor. I collected the materials from him. The next day, I directed that he be queried. He gave an unconvincing answer, of course. I directed that he should be fired. That same day, several managers trooped into my office and said that if he was fired, the magazine would not come out the following week. I told them that since he was probably the only person on this planet with the knowledge of colour separation, then all of us had lost our jobs. I insisted on his being fired. He was fired, but the magazine still came out. My interpretation of what the managers did was that they were co-conspirators in the “chopping” business and wanted to protect their source of “awoof.” The lesson of this story is that in every organisation there is probably always an insider who collaborates with an outsider within a unit, or within the company, to achieve a mischievous purpose. For any syndicate to succeed in doing any dirty job in JAMB, there must be an insider.
My advice to Oloyede is that people learn more from failure than from success. This incident will lead to more successes for JAMB once it takes stock. JAMB does not need to blame the mirror for its looks. What the mirror shows is exactly what it looks like, but it can change that look by identifying who the hackers are, and why they chose to bring a piece of misfortune to JAMB.
As for those who are asking the JAMB Registrar to resign, they should tell Nigerians how many public officials have performed their duties as creditably as Oloyede. I have said it before that, apart from INEC, the next most difficult job in Nigeria is that of the Registrar of JAMB. Why is this so? It is so because success at INEC and JAMB does not depend solely and wholly on the heads of those organisations. Lots of other persons, known or unknown, easily make themselves interlopers who feel that they can make an impact on the organisation for the benefit of others, or for a fee. Politicians and their followers try to influence the outcome of INEC’s exertions for their benefits. In JAMB, students, teachers and parents try to do what they think is needed for the benefit of the students or their schools or families. But at the end of the day, when there is a problem, INEC or JAMB bears the blame.
I request Oloyede to carry on with the difficult job that he is doing for Nigeria. History will remember him kindly.
