Now the hurly burly surrounding the fiasco that marred a part of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, is beginning to settle down with the retake of the exam and release of the result sometime today, I hope the ethnic warriors and closet bigots masquerading as thought and political leaders will, if they still have any iota of decency in them, cover their faces in shame. They have sought to turn a purely mechanical issue into a political slugfest and ethnically motivated bigotry. 

They are too determined and far gone in their effort at detecting ethnic hatred and sinister motives in every action involving their people, in this case the Igbo, and other Nigerians, especially the Yoruba, Hausa or Fulani to be bothered. But that has not and should not dissuade people of goodwill, including other perceptive Igbo people that can see through the self-defeating subterfuge, from rejecting and condemning this obviously irresponsible and dangerous behaviour. It is the product of low self-regard, self-pity and an abnormally high sense of victimhood. These are not the attributes of the Igbo that we encounter on a daily basis- that are our friends, neighbours and family members. 

What is at play here is politics of the most reprobate brew, through which many Nigerians now refract their action and filter their everyday experiences to the detriment of the reality of their situation. It is to open the scab of wounded but unhealed egos, a carry-over of past animosities in new robes. I will return to this shortly. But first to the details of the partially botched UTME that was the excuse for the renewed narrative of ethnic victimisation, disguised escalation of tribal battles, ethnic baiting, bigotry and self-pity.  

The exam that involved precisely 1, 955, 069 candidates was marred by a glitch that apparently affected 379, 997 candidates in one zone that cut across the five states of the South-East and Lagos. About 1.5 million of the candidates that sat the exam scored less than 200 out of an obtainable maximum score of 400. Of the candidates whose results were affected by the technical glitch, the majority 206, 610 candidates were from Lagos State. These apologists of ethnic ‘cleansing’ have chosen to downplay, perhaps because Lagos is their no-man’s land that was developed by outsiders. Then 173, 379 of the affected candidates were from the five states of the South-East. But hardly was the result announced than were concerns raised about the high rate of failure. 

The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, obviously unaware of the glitch, explained it away as a consequence of the anti-malpractice measures put in place by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, the organisers of the exam. Contrary to the impression now being created, his explanation was not aimed at any particular person or group except, perhaps, one that chooses to make themselves the target of an unintended barb for reasons best known to them. While the Minister’s response could be described as hasty and premature, especially since he is neither the spokesperson of JAMB or the Registrar of the organisation, no one can honestly deny the fact that JAMB has put in place some of the best anti-malpractice and exam detection mechanisms. These have had the general effect of bringing down the pass rate unlike the case with the West African School Certificate Examination, WASCE, or the National Examination Council, NECO, exam that often produce high-performing candidates hardly able to justify their high grades at the tertiary level.

The concerns raised about the generally poor performance of the candidates would after the initial soul-searching about the root-cause of it and the need for students to be more studious soon gave way to the outcry of parents, guardians of the candidates and the candidates themselves. This was not limited to any group or individuals as some out for unearned attention and unwarranted recrimination of others would want the rest of us to believe. The likes of Alex Onyia of Educare, whose organisation is located in Lagos and caters to the interest of Nigerians from different ethnic backgrounds, may have spoken louder based on his expertise but he was not on the look-out for Igbo candidates. He was rather motivated to speak out based on the pattern of failure that deviated from previously observed trends. 

Following the outcry from Nigerians, JAMB fast-tracked its post-examination review by at least one month in order to address the concerns. The Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, made no statements either way- to uphold the result or excoriate its critics. He called for an open review of the result and freely invited stakeholders that were not limited to managers of educational institutions like vice chancellors, provosts, deans, professional associations of school teachers and others, but also critics like Educare and Osita Chidoka and his Athena Centre. The review revealed the glitch and the Registrar took responsibility as head of the institution. He did not point fingers at their vendors that are in charge of providing technological solutions for JAMB. He took responsibility and expressed tearful remorse. While this does not excuse the glitch or the pain caused candidates, without question it demonstrates transparency. Such glitches have been recorded around the world. 

Yet spewers of bigotry and ‘useful idiots’ as someone recently called their likes, blinkered by post-2023 elections frustration and their allied narratives of Igbo marginalisation, ran to town with theories of Yoruba conspiracy. They appropriate the entire narratives surrounding the technical glitch and made it into one incontrovertible evidence of Igbo relegation and the detection of the glitch another evidence of Igbo exceptionalism. Oby Ezekwesili whose time as Minister of Education recorded no remarkable achievement beyond the elevated bombast of her self-righteousness and the vainglory of her position at the World Bank, typically called for an ‘independent probe’. In a gesture that says a lot about her wounded ego, she reposted tweets from the Mmesoma Ejikeme fiasco in 2023 even after pretending to support the sanction of the young lady she had supported against better judgement. 

The UNN Branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities joined its voice to the cacophony of ethnic bile being spewed in the garb of intellection as have the South-East Caucus of the House of Assembly and supposedly responsible individuals, journalists and others, who expect friendship for their open display of bigotry. They open wide the fault lines of Nigerian politics and forget that their conduct can only beget distrust. No group has the monopoly of bad behaviour. You can only be friendly to those who are friendly to you. Head or tail, nobody can win against these self-appointed spokespersons of the Igbo. You show generosity and they claim they are too great to be ignored. You look beyond them and they accuse you of ignoring or marginalising them.