The national embarrassment of the computer glitch that resulted in mass failure in the 2025 JAMB examinations ought to compel us into sober reflection. We have seen how deep and fundamental the error from a computer glitch can be. We have also seen how failure to acknowledge the impact of the error can lead to undeserved praise of some and condemnation of others.
No less a person than the Minister of Education came on air to celebrate the mass failure as a confirmation that “miracle centers” where results were magically conjured were the secret behind successes that were being celebrated in some parts of the country. He was so excited that he suggested that Nigerians were parading fake results, which the mass failure in the JAMB examination, with its fool proof check against cheating, had confirmed.
JAMB has given what it believes is an explanation of the glitch. It said that somehow someone forgot to upgrade the part of the system that served the South East and Lagos. One would wonder why South East and Lagos were grouped together. The purpose that the grouping has served is to provide a ready retort to the suggestion that the South East was specifically targeted. We know that Lagos would never agree, under the present regime, to be grouped together with the South East when good is intended. What is required therefore is for investigation to analyze the demography of the areas that have been impacted by the glitch in Lagos State. Are they Ikorodu, Badagry, Mushin and Epe, etc? In the opposite, are the areas Alaba, Ajangbadi, Ajegunle, Amuw-Odofin, Okota, etc? That would tell you whether the inclusion of Lagos in the impact of the glitch makes any difference to whether or not the South East people were digitally attacked.
We have to consider that some ethnic bigots have for long sneered at the results of educational examinations from the South East as the products of miracle centers, particularly, since after Peter Obi joined the presidential campaign with the feather of having made Anambra State the best in education during his years as Governor of the State to his cap. With the coming of Tinubu into Aso Rock, everything Nigeria has been politicized and ethnicized.
However, that is not the focus of this article. There is something that should concern everybody in this episode. We cannot continue to advertise sabotage or likely sabotage of our national digital infrastructure. We are soon going to pay dearly for it when our records lose credibility. Imagine a Minister of Education suggesting that most of us are walking about with fake results from miracle centers. Our digital infrastructure is part of our national security. We cannot afford for the world to brand us digitally unsafe and insecure. We cannot afford for the world to conclude that we do not take data security and ICT infrastructure seriously.
So critical to national security is ICT infrastructure that the Terrorism Prevention Act, 2011 legislates interference with it as a crime of terrorism at section 2(3)(g)(iii)&(ix) thereof, which is made punishable with a death sentence under section 2(c) of the Terrorism Prevention Amendment Act 2013. What happened at JAMB should not be allowed to go the way of what happened within INEC in the 2023 presidential elections, where computer glitch that sabotaged the authentication of the results declared, was allowed to become a crown of heroism on the head of INEC.
