LET’S not play dumb. Just days after the Minister of Education went on air to announce that WAEC and NECO will go CBT by November, JAMB, the poster child of successful CBT exams in Africa, suddenly had its biggest technical failure in over a decade. Call it coincidence. I call it coordinated. Because what you just witnessed might not be a crash. It might be a warning!
Let’s break it down: The Minister announced CBT expansion and the system failed immediately after! The Education Minister said it clearly: “JAMB conducts its exams using a computer-based testing system. They’ve implemented strong security measures and, as a result, fraud or cheating has been nearly eliminated.” Translation? No more miracle centers. No more leaked question papers. No more impersonation networks. No more “special arrangements.” It was a bold move toward sanitizing Nigeria’s broken education system.
But barely a week later: JAMB goes dark. System failure. National headlines. Mass panic. The very exam body they were using as a reference point publicly collapsed! Too perfect. Too fast. Too suspicious. Miracle centers are not ready to die. Understand this: Exam malpractice is not just cheating. It’s an economy. An entire shadowy industry is built around it.
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Now imagine NECO and WAEC switching to CBT: You just killed a billion-naira black market! Do you really think they’ll sit and clap? No. They’ll sabotage the blueprint—before it scales through. And JAMB was the target. So what’s the fastest way to stop the government from replicating JAMB’s model? Make JAMB look unreliable.
Let’s not be naïve… There are powerful people whose entire revenue streams depend on keeping education corrupt. They will fight reforms like their life depends on it. Because, for many of them, their life does, in fact, depend on it.
— O. M. O. Oludoye
and then