Human rights activist, Omoyele Sowore, has called for the immediate scrapping of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), and Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), describing them as “extracurricular bureaucratic busybodies.”
Sowore made the statement on Wednesday via his official X handle, following JAMB’s admission that technical errors impacted the performance of several candidates in the recently concluded 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
“Time to scrap these extracurricular bureaucratic busybodies …JAMB, NYSC, TETFUND, NELFUND, they are all useless,” Sowore added.
JAMB had earlier acknowledged lapses in its examination process, including malfunctioning computer systems and errors in score processing, which led to widespread complaints among candidates and parents across the country.
However, Sowore’s comments reflect growing public frustration with Nigeria’s education and youth development institutions, which have faced repeated criticism for inefficiency, corruption, and failure to deliver on their mandates.
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, disclosed this during a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday, acknowledging that errors during the initial examination negatively affected the performance of some candidates.
Oloyede revealed that affected candidates would be sent messages with details of the examination rescheduled for this weekend.
The registrar issued an apology in tears and took full responsibility for the lapses.
He said, “In simple terms, while 65 centres (206,610 candidates) were affected in Lagos zone (comprising only Lagos state), 92 centres (173,387 candidates) were affected in Owerri zone, which includes the South East states. In clear terms, in the process of rectifying the issue, the technical personnel deployed by the Service Provider for LAG (Lagos and South-East zones) 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.”