JAMB withdraws result of UTME candidate for deceiving Nigerians

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has withdrawn the result of one Mmesoma Ejikeme, a candidate for the just-released Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) result, over alleged manipulation of her scores.

This is contained in a statement by the Head, Public Affairs and Protocol, JAMB, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, made available to newsmen in Abuja on Sunday.

Recall that Ejikeme, who claimed to have scored 362 in the 2023 UTME, was recently awarded a N3 million scholarship by Innocent Chukwuma, Chairman of Innoson Vehicles Manufacturing Company.

Benjamin said some of the 2023 UTME candidates were parading fake scores in order to get an undue advantage.

He said JAMB, which also listed the case of one Atung Gerald in Kaduna who allegedly claimed to have scored 380, advised the public not to fall victim to the antics of the candidates.

“The attention of JAMB has been drawn to several publications in both print and online media celebrating certain candidates for scoring high in the 2023 UTME.

”The Board is constrained to set the records straight and wishes to state unequivocally that many of the results that many of these candidates are parading are fake.

”In many instances, some of these candidates had actually obtained far lower scores than they were 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, who claimed to have scored 362 in the 2023 UTME and was awarded a N3 million scholarship by Chukwuma,” he said.

He said that the candidate was set to be honored 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 she had actually scored 249 and not 362.

”She had manipulated her UTME result to deceive the public and fraudulently obtained scholarships and other recognitions.

”The Board would like to state that the likes of Mmesoma are still out there, deceiving those who are always in a hurry to bestow honor on candidates without confirmation from the Board,” he added.

He advised the public to always cross-check claims by candidates with the Board before rushing to honor them with undeserving awards.

He said this was because certain software had been created to produce fake results and put them out in the public space for fun, which was what the sponsors of these candidates were using to defraud good-spirited Nigerians.

”It is to be noted that the candidate had sent a message to the Board’s platform to request her UTME result, after which she manually inflated her scores and pasted the same on the 2022 UTME result sheet.

”Unknown to her, the Board had changed the design of the 2023 UTME result sheet. Her original result remains 249, and nothing can change that,” he explained.

He, therefore, said that the candidate would be prosecuted, as the Board would investigate all candidates who made claims to higher scores than they actually obtained.