Why am I writing now? Why am I writing today? Why am I really writing this column today when I am not really sound enough to do so? Why am I when I do not have specific matters – or a specific matter – to address? And why do I say I do not have specific matters – or a specific matter – to address in an environment or in a season that does not have the habit of putting several things off?

Oddly or un-oddly depending on which part of our landscape you are glued to, a perfect image of our country’s meaningfulness or meaninglessness cannot be found in the myth of what we conceive our country to be or not to be.

In my ill-state I could see and think clearly and sharply in my silence. Thoughts came and went. Thoughts appeared and disappeared – thoughts and thoughts about this country: your country my country our country. I could see myself in my sacred rage singing to a harp accompaniment with rapt silence that welcomed my surrender with vigour.

Weep not for Nigeria, for this sick country, weep not for the moment by moment happenings in the land. The pictures of meaninglessness, pointless toils of fortune, of our meaningless existence in our disappointing country that we can never redeem patriotically and absolutely – so it seems – surrendered themselves to me. How ill, how sick, we are! How ill, how sick, you are! How ill, how sick, I am! What mental constructs!

I surrendered thoughts, vague and not vague, as I remembered Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. Several Supreme Masters of Merit appeared. I relaxed. Then it appeared – a simple subject, the simple subject currently troubling everyone – the repetitive toil, the life and reality of this or that lad or lass, this or that young boy or girl, doing his or her university entrance examinations seemingly forever.

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) that has been administering the yearly examinations for years has just had a dark and dreadful dream relating to the release of results of the last examinations it conducted. Blame upon blame has been heaped upon JAMB for the massively massive failures recorded. The candidates who performed poorly and their parents and guardians and sundry persons have complained bitterly.

Some of the parents, groups and organisations have even threatened to take JAMB to court over the catastrophic catastrophe. As a matter of fact, things came to a head when Professor Is-haq Oloyede the JAMB Registrar appeared on television to own up, yes, to own up to errors, what he called “glitches” (not the popular Professor Mahmud Yakubu kind), which he blamed on his watch – if I am saying so correctly.

Indeed, as the chief executive officer of the place, he did what he rightly could do in the face of the overwhelming problem and circumstance. He did not attempt to pretend to catch a scapegoat or a sinner within the JAMB workplace nationally or locally.

He took full responsibility without qualms for what has been. But his action has thrown JAMB and especially his office to a version of the ancient myth of this country his country your country my country our country.

His remarkable sincerity, his remarkable genuineness, his golden genuineness, and his wholesome sincerity, have been employed against him in some quarters. His ethnic colouration, religious belief, or better his religion, as well as his academic training and qualification have suddenly been questioned – so, so suddenly! Indeed, a prodigious ethnic-cum-religious hole has been dug – or being dug – in the ground to bury him dead or not dead.

And the terrible and horrible myth that shapes and defines our country opens the sesame to the digging of the hole. After all, Professor Oloyede is Yoruba, who deliberately wants to imprison the academic progress of brilliant young boys and girls from a particular geographical/geopolitical section of the country! Imagine! They don’t give a damn that Lagos State of the Yoruba particularly was/is optimally affected and had/has more than sufficient taste and bite of the “glitches”.

What arrant nonsense some ethnically-conscious academics are touting! The same academics and those who share their sentiment also want to know what business a scholar of Islamic Studies has to do with JAMB as its chief executive officer. What do we have to tell such persons who cannot but be ill and sickly sick?

How can we wean them off their milk of sick- or ill-thought? All the wonderful and handsome work Professor Oloyede has done all this while and over the length of time he has been in office amounts or comes to nothing – if we foolishly embrace their pathetic myth.

When I saw Professor Oloyede on television shedding tears of pain what I will bear witness to (I don’t know about you) is a star and light of truth and honesty in the heydays of his eyes repudiating the original myth and cyclic activity of our country! I have since gone out of my way to question several persons of different ethnic groups on the subject at hand. The answers I got and which I still get up to now bewildered (and still bewilder) me. I won’t relate them here. After all, I am not concerned with rendering or defending any interpretation or misreading of the myth of what I perceived (and I am still perceiving).

But when you are ill, when one is ill, what will you do, what will one do? Personally, I surrendered my labour of thought to its own existence ultimately. The answer effortlessly descended – and it is still descending. Professor Is-haq Oloyede is not in chains. And, to boot, he is not in any hole.

Who blames him should blame his or her ill-thought and inclination in our meaningless landscape that we should surrender to a picture of changeful changes forever. You may call this one of the paradoxes of Nigeria: a meaningless landscape birthing a meaningful flowing river and vice versa – eternally.

My offered last word to the JAMB Registrar: Employ a scale of arithmetical or mathematical exactitude or near-exactitude to scale up the respective grades of the candidates and place them appropriately in the respective courses they applied for – or transfer them to related courses. What this means is that JAMB should not subject the affected candidates to the pangs and quagmire of another test or examination. Kindly do not solve a problem with another problem. I am not a mathematician, but give some thought to what this layperson is saying.

If this plea comes to you too late in the day, so be it. But do something befitting our forever meaningful remembrance of you when you are no longer available as the lord of the citadel. We must play the cithara for you long after your tenure – if not forever. I surrender… Hear me Oh Masters of Masters!!!
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.