OCI - Failed to Enter Maintenance with "Cannot open access to console, the root account is locked."

Applies to:

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Symptoms:

The system is trying to enter maintenance mode (in this case due to a filesystem corruption issue) for manual intervention but is failing due to the fact that the "root" account's password is locked:

Welcome to emergency mode! After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view
system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" or ^D to
try again to boot into default mode.Cannot open access to console, the root account is locked.
ee sulogin(8) man page for more details.Press Enter to continue.

Cause:

The "root" account's password is locked:

bash-4.2# passwd --status root
root LK 2021-07-22 0 99999 7 -1 (Password locked.)
bash-4.2#