I have decided to join the ongoing debate about the fallouts from the 2025 supposed mass failure in the recently released results of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) exams. There are about three of such fallouts that I want to address. The number one is the predisposition of young people to commit suicide at the face of any slight error, mistake or challenge. The number two is about the need for cross-checking and vetting results before they are finally released. And the third is about the vilification of the JAMB Registrar, Professor Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede.
Now, to my identified number one fallout. That young people easily rush to swallow or drink poison to commit suicide when they are confronted with life challenges, especially such that may not entirely be of their making or that over which they don’t have full control, speaks to a developing erosion of functional family and social support system and cohesion. Such family and social support system and cohesion whose roots are in a sense of communal or collective responsibility that is inherently built on a deep sense of love, affection, commitment, and comraderies in homes and families are needed now than before. The pressures that parents and the community are putting on a lot of young people, especially teenagers, are often irrational as they are, most times, beyond the mental and psychological capacities of the children to withstand or bear.
I once had a student who went into depression because his dad called him a failure for failing a project defence – a failure that, in all honesty, was equally due to the irresponsibility of the guy’s supervisor who failed to read his work to guide him properly on what to do. Some of us had to come in, counsel the guy, give him the needed support to deal with the situation such as mental, psychological and educational support to redo the project.
Parents and guardians should stop calling their children failure, for if truly they are, then the parents are. The best parents and guardians can do when children fail, either by their error of omission or commission, is to first understand the likely mental and psychological implication[s] of such failures on the children. It is to understand that the student, no matter how or what we feel, was responsible for the failure, can never be happy with him or herself for failing.
The problem is often that parents get carried away by their own expectations and, perhaps, the cost of their material and financial investment on the child. Come on, we have to learn how to prioritise things in their proper order or sequence. Money or material investment loss cannot be important to the loss of a child to suicide because we fail to offer him or her the necessary family support in his or her time of mental and psychological challenges.
Sometimes ago, one of my daughters wrote and failed a particular exam. My wife wanted to flare up. I stepped into the matter by telling her to calm down. I reminded her of how her parents were there for her through all the diets she wrote to become a chartered accountant.
We often easily forget our own history and developmental challenges. I have failed before. My second term Primary 5 exams. I failed. I still remember. I told my daughter she would rewrite the exam and pass. I fired her up with motivations. I told her what to do and how to do it. I advised her on things to prioritise. I painted the picture of success for her to see. I told her of the glory of success. I told her of the lessons from failure. She got the picture. She internalised the message and, not only her, even her other siblings because we got all of them involved in the challenge. Everybody was then rooting for her and checking on her as she prepared for a resit. She did and passed.
I told them: failure is part of the human experience. They can fail. They would fail, but they must never give up. So, my children know I am their number one fan, either when they get it wrong or when they get it right. I have the responsibility to help and support them, not when it goes right according to plan and fine; I have it when it goes wrong and against the plans.
Parents must stop putting unnecessary pressure on their children. Parents must always be there for the children. Parents must accept and give room for such errors, mistakes and failures. They must teach the children that such are not the end of the story.
We must build a generation that is ready for challenges, a generation that is ready to hit life back when life hits it. A generation that is ready to tell life, ‘we die here until I make it through.’
There is always a better time and way or manner to also engage children or students who have just failed any examination on their roles or contributions to the failure. It is not just in the immediate when they are still seriously grieving and are mentally and psychologically vulnerable.
Equally, the manner of the engagement of pointing out their errors or mistakes is very important. The manner must have a human face with clear understanding that we are out to improve and make a change, and not to run down or destroy, especially when we are dealing with kids, teenagers.
At Masters degree or PhD levels, we may not so much care, for candidates at those levels are expected to have matured and understood life. They are expected to have understood the meaning of leadership and its responsibilities.
Parents and guardians who feel so strongly that they need to scold and correct their wards’ negligence as the reasons for failure must understand the timing and the manner of approach to addressing the matter.
It is always good to ensure that the children have healed and stabilised with time before we talk about their own negligence. And, as I have said, the manner in which the matter is taken up and presented is very important. The overall goal is encouragement and the motivation to see the need to sit up and make the best of their brains, potentials and time.
It is against this backdrop that it is ridiculous to me that folks are blaming Professor Oloyede for the candidates who are said to have committed suicide for failing JAMB. Let us set aside the said technology error that returned unexpected results for some students for a moment. Let us assume that a candidate has indeed failed; the question is: is suicide supposed to be a rational response to a failure in an examination by any candidate? If indeed a candidate is intelligent, highly cerebral, is it not expected that such an intelligent or cerebral candidate is expected to be reflective and rational in his or her judgment as well?
For me, true intelligence must also be demonstrated in emotional and psychological stability in the face of adversity. Thus, I don’t normally take any so-called intelligent person that is not stable in the face of adversity any serious. I don’t. My judgment may not be completely right, yet I believe true intelligence must equally predispose the intelligent to dealing with adversity with a level of mental stability – intelligently!
Now, to the second fallout from the development. I think examination bodies like JAMB and the others who have gone digital or techy must be reflective enough to admit that there could always be an unplanned technological or digital failures and errors. As such, the race to quickly release the results of examinations from such platforms must always be mediated with the need to do a second check on the system and the results before they are finally released to the public.
In essence, there must be equal technical and systemic processes by which the process and the results can be double checked and revalidated before they are finally made public. I think putting a process like this in place would have minimised the margins of this form of errors and embarrassment to JAMB.
Having said that, I will now proceed to my identified third fallout, which is the vilification of the JAMB Registrar, Prof Oloyede. The vilification is coming after the man came out to openly admit the errors in the released results and taking full responsibility for it. Of course, he then proceeded to offer solution to the problem. Nevertheless, he is still being vilified for the system error and his admittance of the error.
Those who seem to want his head, calling for his immediate resignation, are quick to draw such analogy of a student who failed in an examination who may not be passed and asked to proceed to the next stage or level simply by admitting his or her error openly. They have, however, forgotten that such students will also not be prevented from rewriting the exam at the next available opportunity!
Even in the university, before a student would be advised to withdraw from a programme, he would have consistently been failing and would have dropped below 1 CGPA point. Prof Oloyede’s record in JAMB is far from being a record of a consistent failure or failing. If anything, Prof Oloyede has such an impeccable record in JAMB to date. I guess certain folks are just too impulsive in their analysis of things and judgment.
I want to appreciate Prof Farouq Kperogi. I have just read his column online where he gave examples of such technical and digital error induced crisis and failures in similar examinations across the globe and nobody was asked to resign and nobody resigned. Should we ask a pilot to resign and stop flying aeroplanes if a plane he flew developed a technical error midair? Should we ask a surgeon to resign because there was a blackout in the course of a surgery that stopped some of his equipment from working, leading to the death of the patient? Should we ask a professor to resign because the university server or site went down temporarily?
Without really conceding the facts of the circumstances, let us for the sake of this debate admit that Oloyede failed, it is a crime for him to have an opportunity for his resit?
Prof Oloyede has been a phenomenon in JAMB. That is a fact. Prof Oloyede has brought a lot of sanity to JAMB and admission processing in Nigeria. That is a fact. If Prof Oloyede resigns from JAMB today, his legacies live on and they remain standards to be beaten, standards that most of the people who are calling for his resignation cannot meet or set for themselves or the organisations they serve.
‘Bode Ojoniyi writes from Abuja.
https://ojoniyiolabode.blogspot.com/
