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The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says Mmesoma Ejikeme will be banned from taking Unified Tertiary and Matriculation Examination for three years for allegedly forging her 2023 UTME result.
Ejikeme has been in the news since JAMB accused her of manipulating her UTME score from 249 to 362.
The exam body in a statement on Sunday, July 2, 2023, alleged that Ejikeme used her manually inflated score to attract a scholarship with the claim that she had the highest score in the 2023 UTME.
While Nigerians are calling for further investigation on the issue, JAMB insisted that the candidate doctored the UTME result, adding that the highest scorer for the year 2023 exam had already been announced.
Addressing the issue in an interview with Leadership newspaper on Monday, July 3, 2023, Dr Fabian Benjamin, JAMB’s spokesperson said contrary to Ejikeme’s claim, no candidate scored 362 in the 2023 UTME.
“We had announced the highest scorer for the year 2023 which incidentally happens to come from Anambra state and when we got the information that somebody is laying claim of 362, we went into our system and we discovered that there was nobody with a score of 362, ” he said.
Fabian insisted that the candidate forged her UTME result and would be banned from participating in the annual exam for three years.
“Her 249 result is withdrawn and she will be banned from taking this examination in the next three years,” the spokesperson said.
JAMB explains how Ejikeme’s UTME result was doctored
Fabian said JAMB’s investigation on the issue showed that Ejikeme doctored a text message and a result slip to support her claim.
“If I tell you the level of investigation that we have conducted, we have the 55019, our USSD code. We use that 55019 to communicate with candidates during registration, examination and release of results.
“Immediately after this result was released, she checked her result, instead of sending “RESULT TO 55019, she sent a message “Post UTME to 55019 but the machine now sent her results because the phone number she is using is a unique identifier, so it sent her result which was 249.
“She now doctored that result — because that one is a text message so it’s very easy to doctor. So she doctored the results, put the marks the way she wanted and sent them back to 55019 so the code also returned her original results again,” Fabian explained.
The JAMB spokesperson further said the candidate sent the message four times and she kept getting 249 as her result, adding that the result slip Ejikeme presented was obtained outside JAMB’s database.
“So, she went outside the database to obtain that slip, but unfortunately for her sponsors or her managers, they didn’t know that there are security devices attached to each slip that is printed and the QR code is one of them. There are about seventeen of them which I wouldn’t want to mention on air.
“Unfortunately for her again, for 2023, we didn’t use the design she is holding. What she is holding is different from what we are using for 2023,” Fabian said.
I didn’t forge my result — Ejikeme
Contrary to JAMB’s claim, Ejikeme has defended herself, saying she didn’t forge her UTME result.
Ejikeme in a viral video on Monday, July 3, 2023, said she’s not capable of forging her UTME result.
She explained that the result in which she scored 362 was downloaded and printed from JAMB’s website.