The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has taken action against alleged score manipulation in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) by withdrawing the result of a candidate, Ejikeme Mmesoma.
This decision comes after Innocent Chukwuma, Chairman of Innoson Vehicles Manufacturing Company, awarded a N3 million scholarship to Mmesoma based on her claimed UTME score of 362.
According to a statement released by Dr. Fabian Benjamin, the head of public affairs and protocol at JAMB, certain individuals had been attempting to deceive the system by disguising bogus test results, aiming to gain an unfair advantage.
In the statement, Dr. Benjamin said, “It is to be noted that Miss Mmesoma had sent a message to the Board’s platform to request her UTME result after which she manually inflated her scores and pasted same on the 2022 UTME result sheet.
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“Unknown to her, the Board had changed the design of the 2023 UTME result sheet. Her original result remains 249 as nothing can change that. With this her ignoble act, Miss Mmesoma would be prosecuted and her original result withdrawn.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 Once discovered, such candidates’ original results would be withdrawn forthwith and they would be handed over to relevant security agencies for prosecution.”
The exam body, which also listed the case of one Atung Gerald in Kaduna that allegedly claimed to have scored 380, advised the public not to fall victim to the antics of the candidates.
“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,” Benjamin said.
“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 (Dr.) 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.”
The JAMB spokesman warned that the likes of Mmesoma are still out there deceiving those who are always in a hurry to bestow honours on candidates without confirming from the Board.
He gave another instance of one Atung Gerald in Kaduna, who claimed to have scored 380.
“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 obtain the 2023 UTME application documents not to talk of sitting the examination,” Benjamin said.
