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A former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, has called on Mmesoma Ejikeme, a 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) candidate at the centre of a result controversy, to come out with the true situation of things.
Mmesoma, a 19-year-old pupil from Anambra State, was accused by JAMB of forging her result which showed an 'inflated score' from 249 to 362, making her the supposed best candidate in this year's examination.
However, according to the body evidence made available by the examination body, Mmesoma appeared to have created the result she's parading from a dubious website, but the pupil has severally denied any wrongdoing.
JAMB has imposed a three-year ban on Mmesoma while her original result has also been nullified.
But, speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Wednesday, Mmesoma insisted that she should be absolved of any blame for the controversy saying, “It’s not my fault that I printed my result like that and they said that I forged my result. It’s not my fault. So, them banning it is not fair.”
Minister asks Mmesoma to come clean
Reacting to the matter, Chidoka, who is also the owner of the Computer-Based Testing (CBT) Centre where Mmesoma sat for her examination, pledged to beg JAMB for leniency on the one condition that the candidate will come clean with the source of her result.
In a statement on Wednesday, July 5, 2023, the former Minister said, “For Mmesoma, she should come clean and explain how she got that result and who led her down that path. If she does that, I will lend my voice to beg JAMB to note her age and show more leniency.”
Speaking further, Chidoka said he observed two red flags when he saw the candidate’s result online.
“First, our center is no longer addressed as Thomas Chidoka Center for Human Development on the JAMB portal since 2021. The correct name on the JAMB portal and Main Examination Slip is Nkemefuna Foundation (Thomas Chidoka Center for Human Development)…Her (Mmesoma) result showing Thomas Chidoka without the Nkemefuna Foundation, which was on her Main Examination slip, raised my suspicion about the genuineness of the result.
“The second red flag was the result template. A cursory review of some of those who took the last examination at our center showed a different result slip template with the candidate’s passport picture, JAMB watermarks, and no mention of the name of the examination center," the former Minister said.
While noting that his centre has been involved with the JAMB CBT examination since 2016, Chidoka added that “I gave the young Mmesoma the benefit of the doubt and waited to see if she would explain how she got the result, which is obviously not the result template that Jamb used in 2023. I knew it was fake.”