By Abimbola Ofunnaike
The Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board(JAMB) Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has disclosed that the board has concluded its investigations on the case of Mmesoma Ejikeme, a student in Anambra State, who was accused of fraudulently inflating her 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination result.
The JAMB Registrar made this disclosure in a transcript sent from Windhoek, Namibia, on Tuesday, 4 July, 2023.
“The truth is that JAMB has concluded its investigation on Mmesoma’s score falsification matter; she was not the only one caught, just that others have chosen not to go out.
“Presently, there is an industry faking results, and unfortunately, they cannot penetrate the JAMB system. The reason is that the system is foolproof and we will prove it at any time.
“It is unfortunate that parents and some of the candidates who are being fooled are not aware that they have only been fooled.
“There is internal evidence to show that the change in Mmesoma’s scores was done with her collaboration. There are certain features pertaining to her that only she knows, and unless she makes them available to somebody else, they couldn’t have increased her scores on her behalf.”
The JAMB boss also disclosed that he earlier spoke with a former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, on Ejikeme’s matter and told her that it was a high-level scam.
“We improved on our facilities this year, so Ejikeme and her collaborators were still living in the past. I spoke with Mrs Ezekwesili on the matter, and I told her that it was a high-level scam, 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,” Oloyede added.
Recall that the embattled 19-year-old Anambra student has been in the news following allegations of UTME score forgery.
JAMB, on Tuesday,4 July, 2023, released a result slip, which it confirmed as authentic, showing that Mmesoma’s score in the 2023 UTME was 249 instead of 362, she had been parading.
JAMB’s spokesperson, Fabian Benjamin, in a statement early Tuesday described the result being flaunted by Mmesoma as obselete.
“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,” Benjamin said.
Benjamin also responded to a Monday video of Mmesoma defending herself.
The JAMB spokesman, who appeared on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, questioned Ejikeme’s role in the alleged forgery.
“If you look at her posture—look at the video very well—if you look at the video critically, you will see that somebody is coaching her on what to say. Just sit down and look at the video she posted yesterday,”he said.
With Anambra State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, setting up a committee of inquiry into the matter, the JAMB spokesperson said the exam body wants to be a part of the process.
“We are interested. I’ve sent a message to the Commissioner of Education saying, ‘Please invite us. We’ll come up with all the facts.’ And we want to appeal to Airtel to also appear because Airtel has all the communications and interactions between this candidate and JAMB on the phone.
“And if the candidate will be sincere to bring her phone, you can see those transactions, the dates are there. If you had gone further, you would have seen that, yesterday, she also printed the result,”Benjamin said.
