Key Highlights
- JAMB said it will prosecute Ejikeme Mmesoma for manipulating her results and parading herself as the top scorer for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
- It stated that Mmesoma set out to deceive the public to fraudulently obtain scholarship and other recognitions, noting that she had been awarded a N3 million scholarship by businessman, Chief Innocent Chukwuma, while a state honour was being planned to celebrate her.
- The examination body said it also uncovered one Atung Gerald from Kaduna State, who never sat the exam, but claimed to have scored 380.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said it will prosecute one Ejikeme Mmesoma for manually inflating her score from 249 to 362 and parading herself as the top scorer for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME)
This disclosure is contained in a statement issued by the Spokesman of JAMB, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, on Sunday, where he noted that Mmesoma manipulated her UTME result to deceive the public to fraudulently obtain scholarship and other recognitions.
JAMB, which stated that some of the results paraded by some of these candidates are fake, noted that it found the case of Mmesoma particularly pathetic as she had been awarded a N3 million scholarship by businessman, Chief Innocent Chukwuma, while a state honour was being planned to celebrate her.
What JAMB is saying
- The statement from the JAMB Spokesman reads, “The attention of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has been drawn to several publications in both print and online media celebrating certain candidates for being high scorers in the 2023 UTME.
- “The board is constrained to set the records straight and wishes to state unequivocally that many of the results which many of these candidates are parading are fake. In many instances, some of these candidates had actually obtained far lower scores than they are claiming and had used some funny software packages to manipulate their results to deceive unsuspecting members of the public.
- “The most pathetic of them all is the case of Miss Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma, who claimed to have scored 362 in the 2023 UTME and was awarded a N3m scholarship by Chief Innocent Chukwuma.
- “She was even set to be honoured by the Anambra State Government when one of its top officials put a call through to JAMB to confirm her claim only for the board to reveal that Miss Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma had actually scored 249 and not 362 she claimed.
- “She had manipulated her UTME result to deceive the public to fraudulently obtain scholarship and other recognitions.”
JAMB to prosecute candidate
The examination body said it would prosecute Mmesoma as well as withdraw her original result.
- It stated, “With this her ignoble act, Miss Mmesoma would be prosecuted and her original result withdrawn. This is not all, as the board would, in due course, investigate all candidates laying claims to higher scores than they actually obtained.
- “Once discovered, such candidates’ original results would be withdrawn forthwith and they would be handed over to relevant security agencies for prosecution.”
Another identified case
The examination body said it also uncovered one Atung Gerald from Kaduna State, who never sat the exam, but claimed to have scored 380.
- JAMB said, “His ethnic group had taken the issue up, requesting that he should be given special recognition only for the board to disappoint them with the incontestable fact that Atung never obtained the 2023 UTME application documents not to talk of sitting the examination.”
This generation of young people seem too desperate to be in the limelight that some can actually use fraudulent or unverified means to do so. Even if by any chance, there was an error while printing her results, why not verify same with JAMB before running to the press to attain celebrity status. Anyway, she has got her wish, and now it all appears to be for the wrong reasons.
@Stan, if the result was printed from the JAMB portal as has been alleged, what other “verification” should she waiting for? It seems that it’s only in Nigeria that basic technology does not seem to work properly. First, it was INEC, and now JAMB! SMH
What sort of uninformed folks populate Nigeria’s public institutions? You cannot “withdraw” an original result when that result was itself not a product of fraud. SMH