Sowore Blasts JAMB, NYSC, TETFund, NELFUND as UTME Errors Spark Outrage

Nigerian politician and human rights activist Omoyele Sowore has called for the immediate scrapping of JAMB, NYSC, TETFund, and NELFUND, describing the agencies as “extracurricular bureaucratic busybodies.”

Sowore made the call in a post on his official X handle on Wednesday, reacting to JAMB’s admission that technical glitches had affected the performance of several candidates in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

“It is time to scrap these extracurricular bureaucratic busybodies, JAMB, NYSC, TETFund, NELFUND—they are 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 remarks reflect growing public frustration with Nigeria’s education and youth development agencies, which have faced longstanding criticism over inefficiency, alleged corruption, and failure to deliver on their core mandates.

The examination body earlier announced that 379,997 candidates in Lagos and the five Southeast 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.

Fighting back tears, Oloyede apologised and acknowledged full responsibility for the lapses.

“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 Southeast 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 Southeast zones had inadvertently failed to update some of the delivery servers.

Apologising for the errors, Oloyede said he took personal responsibility as the Registrar of JAMB, including for the negligence of the service provider. He offered an unreserved apology for the situation and the trauma it had caused to affected Nigerians directly and indirectly.