For a fleeting moment the JAMB (Joint Admission and Matriculation Board) Registrar’s tearful press conference looked like the denouement of a saga that has seen the manager of “Matriculation Examination for entry into all Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education (by whatever name called) in Nigeria” admit to errors in the results of some candidates who recently took the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME). Step back from much of that drama, though, and in significant parts, this has been a most unpleasant sequence of events. The reports of, at least, a suicide by a candidate disappointed by the outcome of the exams, describe one extreme of the spectrum of experiences.
JAMB’s initial gut response (bruited abroad most stridently by the board’s self-appointed shills) was to suggest that the unusual scale of the failures reflected deeper problems with the country’s education system. Several days after, and in the light of the registrar’s melancholy performance, to describe these early responses as insensitive, does sound like an understatement. Especially given that the cohort at the receiving end of JAMB’s errors make up the very vulnerable for which societies are set up to protect.
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To have failed this category of youths is inexcusable on its own – and this is irrespective of the reasons for this. But think through the implications for our economy’s longterm outcomes from the potential damage to our human capital and its future productivity, and the demand for prompt restitution is a non-negotiable one. To its credit, JAMB is further along this path than most Nigerian institutions have ever been. Is the plan to reschedule the UTME for the 379,997 affected candidates starting Friday, 16 May enough? To the extent that it offers a significant level of remediation, yes.
Are there additional lessons from this? Institutional responses, for instance, which help reduce both the possibility of future occurrences of this sort of failure across all government-citizen interfaces, and where these snafus occur regardless, assist in mitigating their adverse impact? Arguably, yes. Not surprisingly, there has been much debate over how helpful the JAMB registrar’s resignation would be. On one side are those who insist that his lachrymose mea culpa is penance enough. Apparently, not enough Nigerian public officials are as humble as Professor Is-haq Oloyede has turned out to be. And even fewer have been as competent in the management of a public institution as he has been in the nine years since he has been at the helm of JAMB. Ought not all these to count for something?
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Yes, they should. And, perhaps, in this case, they do. However, in the aftermath of failures in their departments (especially one as momentous as in the JAMB case), the resignation of public officers serves additional other important purposes. Through Nigeria’s brief history, the impunity with which our leaders approach their responsibilities to the people has been a major worry. Often, we blame this on how these people got into power. A military coup d’etat, and rigged elections nearly never provide the connections with the citizenry that is needed for accountability to thrive. Yet, without accountable leaders, our efforts at building a decent economy labour in vain. However we dice it, Professor Is-haq Oloyede has taken responsibility for failures that include both poor decisions and a lack of oversight. Mismanagement? Maybe not! But within this context – of a leader finally taking responsibility for the actions of the institution he superintends – his resignation would strengthen the principle that leaders are ultimately accountable for the agencies of the state that they accept to manage. The buck ought to stop somewhere!
When we have more Nigerians doing this, then the public is schooled in the fact that failures have consequences. And being the patriot that he is, Professor Is-haq Oloyede would be one of the first to admit that we cannot restore or hope to preserve trust in our public institutions if we continue to signal that our economy neither values integrity nor transparency. By volunteering his resignation, he gets a further opportunity to set a precedent for ethical behaviour and reinforce a culture of responsibility in the public service.
Professor Is-haq Oloyede’s resignation could also be argued in terms of helping make the political ambience easier for the Tinubu administration. But such has been the unrivalled successes of the incumbent federal government in the management of the domestic economy that it has been rendered tone-deaf to popular concerns, and so it might not feel a need to defuse the political tensions arising from this incident.
Finally, admit to the tremendous reforms that Professor Is-haq Oloyede brought about at JAMB, and you cannot but wonder if this now famous “glitch” ought not to signal the end of an era. After nine years at the helm, the distinguished professor’s resignation could also be the chance that JAMB needs to conduct reforms or changes in leadership that may be necessary to correct systemic issues and prevent future failures.
Uddin Ifeanyi, journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.
