Mahmood Glitch and Oloyede Glitch
No man bears the two names of this headline but a common thing happened to both of them. There is nobody like Mahmood Glitch and there is nobody like Oloyede Glitch. Mahmood Yakubu is the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)while Oloyede is the Registrar of Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB). Both of them are professors. Both were worried by a phenomenon called ‘glitch’. If you belong to my generation you may have problem with ‘glitch’ as I had. My generation is not the internet generation, internet is the technology of the youths. It’s been said we the older generation fear the internet, we don't trust it. So for me the word ‘glitch’ was so strange until Mahmood Yakubu, the Chairman of INEC and his Information and Communication and Technology (ICT) team popularized it in 2023. The National Assembly had finally passed the bill to empower INEC to run electronic voting in the elections of 2023. The understanding of many was that by that approval of the National Assembly, which took a lot of debate, the nation may have a free and fair election. But it was not to be. During the collation of the presidential election, the word ‘glitch’ became dominant out of INEC. Everybody was parroting it. I had to look up the meaning of the word so I get myself informed. ‘Glitch’ is the word used to describe minor error in technology, especially computer. So what had happened? INEC system had developed a problem, it had suffered a glitch. Somebody explained that some hackers, another strange word had broken into the INEC system by some crooked means. And so INEC would not continue with the ICT again.
As usual, the election result was disputed. Some, especially those who lost the election said INEC had rigged them out by tampering with its system. INEC continued to blame ‘glitch’. Then its Chairman Mahmood Yakubu when it seems mayhem was going to breakout asked anybody that is aggrieved to go to court. INEC argued that there was nothing in the law that asked it to compulsory use the electronic voting system. Both Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party lost their cases in the court. It didn't end there and till today the Yoruba, the ethnic group that produced the president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu who won the election and the Igbo that produced Peter Obi who lost are at daggers drawn till today. Professor Ishaq Oloyede is the Registrar of JAMB. Since he got appointed into JAMB on August 9 , 2016 he has revamped the operations of the examination body. Rather than steal money as leaders in Nigeria do, he has turned the organization to revenue generation for government. He has also reduced the fees paid for its exams and upgraded the work ethics of the organization. But while he was doing all these and getting the accolades of Nigerians, a glitch occured; an exam which the organization had very well prepared for and was assured will turn out best turned sour when all candidates from the southeastern states and Lagos state failed. That attracted criticism especially from the southeast states. When the criticism will not abate but rather escalated, it got the attention of the registrar who decided to do an immediate review. He invited many computer experts from all parts of the country, especially the southeast states. He also invited opinion leaders from among the Igbo who had been vocal in their criticism. And they found out that it was an error that affected the machine and caused the mass failure.
The criticism took an ugly tribal turn. It has been planned, it was alleged, to specially fail Igbo students so that they will be denied university admission. Even the intellectuals among the Igbo did not spare the registrar and his organization. Oyibo Eze, Chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Nigeria, Nsukka branch joined the critics; saying the attack was on the Igbo to ensure they don't get university admission. The social media was abuzz and all manners of attack back-and- forth resumed between the Yoruba and Igbo. But should there have been criticism? Should there have been that tribal attack on Professor Ishaq Oloyede of JAMB? I think there should have been criticism. Professor Oloyede himself agreed that it was when the criticism was getting strident that his attention was called into it. Perhaps if there had not been that high decibel complaint he and his team might have continued to slap themselves in their backs thinking all had been well. When they looked deeper along with other responsible members of the Nigerian society, they saw a glitch. Oloyede did not ignore the criticisms, rather he came to the public and tabled the result of the review. He did not hide anything, he even disclosed certain things he said an examination body should not disclose in the public concerning some secrets of its exam. He offered a remedy, a resit for the affected candidates in the southeast and Lagos.
It was after this public disclosure and apology including tears from the eyes of 70 year-old Professor Oloyede that I got invited into the fray. An Igbo close friend of mine, who had told me not to discuss Nigeria’s issues with him again sent some posts to me on WhatsApp. They were all in connection with Professor Oloyede and JAMB. Because I had not been following the issues I did not know what he meant by the posts. Then I saw his comments: "Despite that Nigeria will not allow Ndigbo to exit the nation, the nation continue to place obstacle on the path of Igbo". "A Yoruba girl in Ikorodu, Lagos State had committed suicide because she had failed Jamb". This was a friend who had told me not to engage him on national issues again despite that he was always the person to start such conversations. I got his trick, he used the story of the Yoruba girl that committed suicide to bait me into an ethnic stand. I told him that was not the first time a student will commit suicide because he failed Jamb. I told him about a niece who wanted to commit suicide because she failed her promotion exam and how I had rescued her by placing her in a private school, and how she had just done very well in JAMB and looking up to read Computer Science.
He also sent me an X post of a Yoruba person who advised that Igbo should abandon JAMB and take some foreign exams. I think that also was to lure me into sympathy with Ndigbo. He also sent a photograph of one Fabian Okoro, an Igbo who is the head of ICT at JAMB and deputy to Oloyede. I told him I can't see any reason for anybody wanting to deny Igbo students admission into the universities. Admission is by quota and the place of Igbo students is reserved no matter their scores. Just as scores have been lowered for northern students to gain admission to Federal Government Secondary schools, the same would have been done for Igbo students. Moreso the man in charge of ICT at JAMB is Igbo and so how would denial of his kith and kin happen under his watch. My friend wrote: "Your minister of education said the mass failure was the result of the upgrade in the system of JAMB that put cheating to check". The minister of education was "your" and not "our". In other words my friend had exited the country. He was not done yet. According to him, it was only the area of Lagos that Igbo resided that was affected by the failure only for me to read later that there were more candidates affected in Lagos than the whole of the five states in the southeast put together. I gave him a piece of my mind that I was not going to join his ethnic bigotry and that I don't see Oloyede as someone who could do that because there was no reason for it. I'm resolute in my conviction that error had occurred and that the man contrary to the attitude of Nigerian leaders had apologized and offered a remedy. Professor Oloyede to me is a very distinguished Nigerian, a Muslim with a difference who had proved himself so much in the past. My friend got infruiated that he asked I should not engage him again on Nigeria and African issues. African issues? But we are first and foremost Nigerians and Africa is not a nation in the sense in which Nigeria is a nation. My friend is ready in his mind to exit Nigeria and Africa. I told him I love to respect people's request and that I will respect his request.
At least, Professor Oloyede did a review, apologized and offered a remedy. In this, he is different from his colleague, whose system also suffered a glitch, Professor Mahmood Yakubu. Mahmood Yakubu asked Nigerians who disagreed with him to go to court. On his part, Oloyede exposed his error and asked Nigerians to forgive him and called for a resit exam. If Oloyede had been in INEC, would he have done that? Would he have done what he did as JAMB registrar if he were in INEC or would he like Professor Mahmood Yakubu have asked Nigerians to go to court? Would Professor Mahmood Yakubu have done what Oloyede did if he was in JAMB; confess the glitch and apologize? I'm so convinced that Oloyede would have done exactly what he did in JAMB if he were at INEC as the chairman. His apology and remedy would have given democracy and forthrightness a boost in Nigeria. Institutions don't make men but men build institutions and make them. It is character that matters. Oloyede in my view is a man of integrity. He wept, I think because he couldn't imagine what happened to have happened under his watch. Oloyede knew the reputation he had built over the years was about to suffer a reproach. I believe Oloyede would have behaved to type in INEC while Mahmood would have done as he did in INEC if he were in JAMB. Those who have had related with Oloyede in JAMB have spoken so glowingly of his honesty and transparency. He has rescued many students whose Nigeria’s corrupt system had undercut from getting admission which they merit.
So my two counsels: let President Bola Tinubu as he thinks of finding a successor to Professor Mahmood Yakubu at the end of his tenure replace him with Professor Ishaq Oloyede. I don't wish Professor Oloyede ever of a glitch again but I'm sure if there is a genuine problem in INEC he will not hide it from Nigerians. What will Nigerians do if Oloyede acts in the way he did in JAMB in INEC. I think they will understand with him and praise him. Oloyede and his type are a rare gift. My second counsel is to my Igbo compatriots. Please dear Ndigbo, you are getting sensitive and touchy more than necessary. You are looking for an enemy where there is none. Glitches had affected public exams in China and the US and nobody had been crucified, nobody had alleged tribal cause. Recently we heard that Ndigbo has no presence at the top heirarchy of the Police because they have not been enlisting in the police. Now IPOB is asking Ndigbo not to enlist in the Army. IPOB alleged that the Igbo are being sent to the crisis areas to die. There is no ethnic group whose citizens are not dying in the Army. This is why our leaders must be serious. If Yoruba and Igbo are dying in the Northeast and Northwest and the Middle-Belt for the cause of restoring peace in the north, if Hausa and Yoruba are dying in the Southeast as a result of the secessionist attempts there, then our leaders must know they have a duty to build a Nigeria which is all inclusive and where merit must replace favoritism and nepotism. For my Igbo brothers, please know that Nigeria is not going to breakup no matter who is wishing it. The danger of breaking up is more than the danger of being together. And if Ndigbo is not enlisting in the Army now, in the next ten or twenty years there will not be any Igbo at the top echelon of the Army like it is in the Police now. Then another generation will cry marginalization. The Igbo are asking other tribes to accommodate them in the nation. Their cry resonates but let the Igbo also adjust to their neighbours. Let them stop thinking they are better than others. God regards that as pride and it goes before destruction.
Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos