I tried passing an empty buffer but that didn't work

My codebase explicitly passed null and it works on Android, I don't know about other platforms, An android only solution or multiplatform solution should be tried

   // null can be passed as buffer in android codebase
   GLES20.glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, width, height, 0,
        GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, null
   )