Human rights activist Omoyele Sowore has called for the immediate abolition of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, and the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, labeling them as “extracurricular bureaucratic busybodies.”
Sowore made this statement on Wednesday through his official X handle, in response to JAMB’s recent admission that technical issues had negatively affected the performance of several candidates in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
“It’s time to scrap these extracurricular bureaucratic busybodies, JAMB, NYSC, TETFund, NELFUND—they’re all useless,” Sowore stated.
His remarks followed JAMB’s admission of significant flaws in its examination process, including malfunctioning computer systems and score processing errors, which sparked widespread outcry from candidates and parents nationwide.
Sowore’s comments echo the increasing public dissatisfaction with Nigeria’s education and youth development agencies, which have long been criticized for inefficiency, corruption, and their inability to fulfill their core responsibilities.
The examination body earlier announced that a total of 379,997 candidates in Lagos and the five South-East states would be rescheduled for another sitting of the UTME.
JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, addressed the issue during a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday, acknowledging that technical errors during the initial examination had adversely impacted the performance of some candidates.
He announced that affected candidates would receive messages with details about a rescheduled examination set to take place this weekend.
Visibly emotional, Oloyede offered a tearful apology and accepted full responsibility for the shortcomings.
“In simple terms, while 65 centres (206,610 candidates) were affected in the Lagos zone, which covers only Lagos State, 92 centres (173,387 candidates) in the Owerri zone, covering the South-East states—were also impacted,” he explained.
He further clarified that in the process of addressing the problem, technical staff from the service provider assigned to the Lagos and South-East zones had inadvertently failed to update some of the delivery servers.
Apologising for the errors, Oloyede said, “As Registrar of JAMB, I hold myself personally responsible, including for the negligence of the service provider, and I unreservedly apologise for it and the trauma that it has subjected affected Nigerians to, directly and indirectly.”
