The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has banned Anambra student, Mmesoma Ejikeme, from taking the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) for three years.
Ejikeme was accused by the examination board of forging her result in the 2023 UTME. She allegedly manually manipulated her score, inflating it from 249 to 362 and falsely declaring herself as the top scorer.
JAMB spokesperson, Fabian Benjamin, revealed in a statement released on Tuesday that the board conducted a thorough investigation before reaching this conclusion.
According to Benjamin, after considering the “weighty infraction” committed by Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma, the board has withdrawn her 2023 UTME result and barred her from sitting any future examinations conducted by the board for the next three years.
The statement read,
“EJIKEME JOY MMESOME: WE SHALL CONTINUE TO SERVE WITH INTEGRITY – JAMB
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) hereby restates its earlier position that the UTME result being paraded by Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma is patently fake.
Consequently, the Board would like to reassure Nigerians that its system was neither tampered with nor compromised, as the candidate simply falsified a copy of a result slip belonging to a candidate named ‘Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle’ who took the UTME in 2021 and scored 138.
It is also worth noting that the candidate, in her statement, inadvertently revealed the rightful owner of the result she is parading when she pointed out that the QR code on the result slip showed the actual owner of the said result before she peddled a lie in an attempt to obfuscate the truth.
To witness the unassailable position of the Board regarding this obvious falsehood, the general public is urged to scan the QR code on the result slip to see its actual owner before it was mutilated.
It should be noted that the QR code encapsulates the UTME result of each candidate, hence what is on the result sheet is nothing other than the interpretation of the information on this QR code.
Furthermore, the public is also to note that the Board stopped issuing Notification of Result slips after the 2021 UTME for the simple reason that candidates were falsifying them. Consequently, the Board has been issuing actual UTME RESULT Slips (not notification of results) since 2022, complete with the photograph of each candidate.
Similarly, the public is invited to ponder on the fact that out of all the candidates that sat the 2023 UTME, only Ms. Ejikeme Mmesoma parades the obsolete ‘Notification of Result.’
The Board remains unperturbed by this unfortunate development, as this is not the first time such fraudulent claims have been made. Nigerians are urged to recall numerous occasions where the Board was sued for billions of naira, only for the lawyers to later apologize profusely for their clients’ misadventure. Prominent among these is the case of a candidate, John Chinedu Ifesinachi, who, in 2021, wrote a letter to the Board, threatening to sue for N2b damages, only for him and his counsel to tender an unreserved apology when the candidate eventually confessed his crime in the face of incontrovertible facts in an open investigation observed by several national public institutions, including the Public Complaints Commission, National Human Rights Commission, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Council, Servicom, and media houses.
This case has, therefore, been rightly handed over to relevant security agencies for a thorough investigation to unravel the masterminds of yet another unfortunate scam.
The Board is not averse to public scrutiny and is ready for an open public session involving the agencies listed above, as well as relevant security agencies, where the candidate, parents, guardian, and her legal team will be present.
Another frightening dimension to the unfolding drama is the unwholesome interest of some nefarious elements who, to all intents and purposes, are determined to goad the candidate on this unproductive path, as any casual observer would observe with the obviously stage-managed video aired by Ms. Ejikeme. The Board urges these confusionists to have a rethink, as their evil machinations would soon come to light.
Again, the Board restates its readiness for genuine scrutiny, as this case would not be the first time and might not even be the last of such shenanigans. At the end of the day, the truth would manifest, and the Board vindicated.
In the meantime, the management of the Board urges members of the public to critically examine the issue at hand and avoid trafficking in fake news.
In the meantime, the management of the Board, after considering the weighty infraction committed by Ms. Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma and in line with its established procedures, has withdrawn her 2023 UTME result and also barred her from sitting the Board’s examination for the next three years.
Fabian Benjamin, Ph.D
Ag. Director, PAP”
