The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has released the authentic result slip of a 16-year-old Anambra schoolgirl, Mmesoma Ejikeme, accused of forging her Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) score.
Ejikeme, a student of the Anglican Girls Secondary School (AGSS) Nnewi, Anambra state, reportedly emerged as the overall best student in the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) with an aggregate score of 362.
Ejikeme’s English Language, Physics, Biology, and Chemistry scores were broken down as 98%, 89%, 94%, and 81%, respectively.
Trouble began when the candidate was set to be honoured by the Anambra government when one of its top officials called the board’s attention to confirm her claim.
The board disclosed that the call prompted the board to verify and reveal that Ms. Ejikeme had scored 249 and not 362, as she claimed, to obtain scholarships and other recognition fraudulently.
This was contained in a statement made available on Tuesday morning by the Board’s spokesman, Fabian Benjamin, where JAMB insisted that only Mmesoma paraded an “obsolete” notification slip out of all the candidates that sat the 2023 UTME.
“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 of a candidate named “Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle,” who sat the UTME in 2021 and scored 138.
“It is also instructive to note that the candidate, in her statement, has 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, therefore, urged to endeavour to scan the QR code on the result slip to see its actual owner before it was mutilated. It is to 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.”
Similarly, the Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, on Tuesday, said the Board had concluded investigations on the case of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination candidate, Mmesoma Ejikeme, who was accused of fraudulently inflating her 2023 UTME score.
Oloyede made this disclosure in a transcript sent to our correspondent from Windhoek, Namibia.
He said, “The truth is that JAMB has concluded the investigation on Nmesoma’s score falsification matter. She was not the only one caught, just that others have chosen not to go out”, Oloyede said.
“Presently, there is an industry faking results and unfortunately they cannot penetrate JAMB system, reasons being that (our) system is foolproofed and we will prove it any time. It is unfortunate that parents and some of the candidates that are being fooled are not aware that they are only being fooled.
“There is internal evidence to show that the change in Ejikeme’s scores was done with her collaboration. There are certain features pertaining to her that only her knows unless she makes it available to somebody else. They couldn’t have increased her scores on her behalf.”
The Registrar said he had earlier spoken with a former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, on Nmesoma’s matter, and told her that it was a high-level scam.
“We improved on our facilities this year, so Ejikeme and her collaborators are still living in the past. I spoke with Mrs Ezekwesili on the matter and I told her that it is a high-level scam and I told her that it was a careless forgery.
“This is because we are no longer using some of the things they used in changing those results since 2021. We used that pattern in 2021 and you saw what happened and many of such individuals were caught as well and they were treated accordingly,” he stated
