Undiagnosed panic detected in pod: openshift-controller-manager-operator_openshift-controller-manager-operator invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference

In looking at jobs on an accepted payload at https://amd64.ocp.releases.ci.openshift.org/releasestream/4.12.0-0.ci/release/4.12.0-0.ci-2022-08-30-122201 , I observed this job https://prow.ci.openshift.org/view/gs/origin-ci-test/logs/periodic-ci-openshift-release-master-ci-4.12-e2e-aws-sdn-serial/1564589538850902016 with "Undiagnosed panic detected in pod" "pods/openshift-controller-manager-operator_openshift-controller-manager-operator-74bf985788-8v9qb_openshift-controller-manager-operator.log.gz:E0830 12:41:48.029165       1 runtime.go:79] Observed a panic: "invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference" (runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference)" 

4.12

probably relatively easy to reproduce (but not consistently) given it's happened several times according to this search: https://search.ci.openshift.org/?search=Observed+a+panic%3A+%22invalid+memory+address+or+nil+pointer+dereference%22&maxAge=48h&context=1&type=junit&name=&excludeName=&maxMatches=5&maxBytes=20971520&groupBy=job

1. let nightly payloads run or run one of the presubmit jobs mentioned in the search above
2.
3.

Observed a panic: "invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference" (runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference)}

no panics