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The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said that it won’t announce the name of the candidate with the highest score for the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
The JAMB Registrar, Professor Isha’q Oloyede while announcing the release of the 2024 UTME results said the board won’t announce the top scorer this year ‘to avoid a repeat of the ‘Mmesoma saga.’
It would be recalled that in 2023, a 19-year-old candidate, Mmesoma Ejikeme manually inflated her UTME result from 249 to 362 to claim the highest score in the exam.
Ejikeme had used the manipulated result to attract a ₦3 million scholarship from Innoson Motors before the exam body exposed her lies.
Oloyede also explained that the UTME is only a ranking exam to qualify candidates for other requirements for admission into tertiary institutions.
“It is common knowledge that the Board has, at various fora, restated its unwillingness to publish the names of its best-performing candidates, as it considers its UTME as only a ranking examination on account of the other parameters that would constitute what would later be considered the minimum admissible score for candidates seeking admission to tertiary institutions.
“Similarly, because of the different variables adopted by respective institutions, it might be downright impossible to arrive at a single or all-encompassing set of parameters for generating a list of candidates with the highest admissible score, as gaining admission remains the ultimate goal. Hence, it might be unrealistic or presumptive to say a particular candidate is the highest scorer given the fact that such a candidate may, in the final analysis, not even be admitted, he explained.
Oloyede, however, urged Nigerians who may want to award prizes to high-performing candidates to always verify claims by candidates before offering such awards.