I remember going to Aba in 1993 to buy the UME forms. In an age that was officially analogue, I did not exhaust all of 30 minutes in the bureaucratic runarounds of those days before I clinched the almighty JAMB forms.

After completing and posting the forms back to JAMB together with the legendary ‘self-addressed envelope’, my notification card arrived in the mail. PO Box 86, Umuahia! I was posted to Girls Secondary School (formerly Adanma Girls), Afugiri Umuahia. And I wrote the examination on a serene Saturday morning. And waited. Again, the notification of result came in the mail. Then admission. Then everything else.

An Accredited JAMB CBT Center

Now, almost 30 years after, what used to be a fun - yet orderly - exercise has become bedlam. Grand racket. Charade. Trafficking. I just drove, on Ikorodu Road, past a throng of enervated, perplexed and forlorn youngsters trying to gain ingress into one of the JAMB-approved rent collection centres that they want us all to address as ‘ICT partners’, perhaps for the sake of heavenly peace! Some of these children stand in the scorching tropical sun from morning until 10 p.m., only to have to return the next day, and the day after, and the day after until one of the many prevailing touts ‘helps out’.

Last year, my wife’s niece spent in the aggregate 30 hours within three days before she registered. A colleague was going to report a case of missing person to the police just before her house help walked in a few minutes before midnight from nowhere other than the JAMB ICT centre.

So, the puzzle is this: what sort of technology has JAMB deployed and made life so much more difficult for applicants and rendered 30-year old yesterdays better than today?

What, in Nigeria’s essence, is responsible for: “All things bright and beautiful, Nigeria kills them all”?