Globally, success or failure in the examination is the criterion for future prospects. Too much emphasis is placed on paper qualifications without any thought of the ability of the individual to put into practice the knowledge he claimed to have acquired.
In this respect, certificates are seen as means to an end.
Thus, all means whether straight or crooked are employed to acquire them.
It has been revealed that the desperation by candidates for
the high scores to enable them to study their dream courses at the university
and pressure from their parents push them into falsifying their Unified
Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) results. The culprits who were nabbed
by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and confessed to
falsifying their JAMB results also disclosed how examination syndicates which
specialised in fake upgrade of results of candidates operated.
In the recent case, Miss Mmesoma Ejikeme, a student of
Anglican Girls Secondary School, Nnewi, Anambra, sat for the 2023 UTME and
claimed to have scored 362. On July 2 this year however, JAMB, in a statement
by its Head of Public Affairs and Protocol, Dr Fabian Benjamin accused the girl
of manipulating her UTME score from 249 to 362. Miss Mmesoma and the Joint
Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) have therefore engaged in accusations
and counter-accusations over the authenticity of the candidate’s claim of
scoring 362 in the 2023 UTME.
With the acclaimed 362 score, Mmesoma said she was the
highest scorer in the examination as against the 360 reportedly scored by
another candidate, Umeh Ukechinyere. JAMB said that based on its record, Miss
Ukechinyere scored the highest mark in the 2023 UTME and not Miss Mmesoma.
In a video which has since gone viral on social media, Miss
Mmesoma displayed a notification of a result slip containing the 362 score,
which she claimed was generated from the JAMB portal. But the examination body
has since disclaimed the document, saying it stopped using such format for
result slips in 2021. Meanwhile, JAMB has announced the withdrawal of the
candidate’s 249 score, and suspended her from taking the examinations for the
next three years.
It’s unfair, it wasn’t my fault – Mmesoma
Explaining her role in the matter, Mmesoma said it was not
her fault and that the three-year ban placed on her by JAMB was unfair. She
said; “After our exams, I went to JAMB portal to get my result but it directed
me to another server and that was where I printed that slip from. I did not go
to any computer centre. The only SMS I sent to them was through the JAMB
support system and there was no reply. After all said and done, I now saw that
I got 249. Then I sent them a text message through the JAMB support system to
know what really happened”.
On the three-year ban placed on her by JAMB and the
withdrawal of her result, Mmesoma said; “I am sad about it because it was not
my fault that I printed my result like that and they said that I forged it. It
is not my fault. So, it is not fair for JAMB to ban me”.
Sources at the JAMB however said the operators of the portal
from where she printed the fake result are already on the run and the security
operatives are on their trail.
Why Mmesoma’s case was trending —JAMB
Earlier, JAMB spokesman, Dr Fabian Benjamin said the
examination body has nothing against Mmesoma as it has been dealing with such
issues before now. He said the only reason the current incident has been
trending was because Mmesoma consistently insisted that the fake result she
paraded was real, despite being confronted with superior evidence of her
original result.
“It is a very simple issue that if anyone looks at the
document that was being paraded, you could see that there was a problem. We
have a process, from registration, conduct of exam and result management. The
result she paraded was last used in 2021. Even the address of the JAMB CBT
centre on her slip was not complete. We send out complete addresses. Otherwise,
how is a candidate supposed to locate his or her centre? We don’t have anything
against this girl. The highest score is from the same Anambra and also Igbo. If
you go to the internet, you will see very funny softwares on how to fake JAMB
results for fun. They tag it for fun, meaning that it does not reflect in the
database of JAMB. The software is JAMB fake results for fun”, Benjamin added.
I knew result Mmesoma was parading was fake——Chidoka, owner
of the CBT Centre
But in what seems to be in defence of JAMB, Mr Osita
Chidoka, Nigeria’s former Aviation Minister whose foundation owns the Computer
Based Test (CBT) Centre where the embattled Ejikeme Mmesoma sat her Unified
Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), has spoken up on what he knows about
the controversies surrounding the result obtained by the candidate. Mr Chidoka
raised some questions that suggest that the candidate’s paraded score is fake.
In an opinion piece he wrote, Mr Chidoka said: “Miss Nmesoma
Ejikeme took her 2023 JAMB at my foundation’s Computer-Based Testing (CBT)
Centre at Obosi. I got some calls from worried friends about Nmesoma’s result,
which had Thomas Chidoka Center as her examination centre. I allayed their
worries that the result issue had nothing to do with the examination centre.
“I observed two significant red flags when I saw her result
online. First, our centre is no longer addressed as Thomas Chidoka Centre 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 Centre
for Human Development). Due to the difference in our CAC registration details,
JAMB insisted we change to Nkemefuna Foundation with Thomas Chidoka in a
bracket as an identifier. We implemented the name change in 2021. Her 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 centre showed a different result slip template
with the candidate’s passport picture, JAMB watermarks, and no mention of the
name of the examination centre. I gave the young Nmesoma 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”.
We’re considering prosecuting Mmesoma, others —JAMB
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB has said
it was considering prosecuting all those who forged its Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examination, UTME, to serve as deterrent to people with intention
of faking its results in future.
JAMB particularly said the issue of Mmesoma Joy Ejikeme, the
Anambra schoolgirl, who scored 249 but manipulated it to 360 and one Atung
Gerald from Kaduna, who never participated in the 2023 UTME but forged the
result and scored himself 380, will not be swept under the carpet.
Although the board said it has concluded its investigation
on Mmesoma, it said it would only act when investigations being handled by
independent investigative agency it involved in the matter was released.
Spokesperson of JAMB, Fabian Benjamin who said this on
Friday, ruled out sole involvement of Mmesoma in the unwholesome act, noting
that she may have been assisted by some dubious elements to perpetuate the act.
“Mmesoma is actually a teenager, that is our challenge now
but the security agency involved in her case is profiling her. We suspect she
might not be the original initiator of the act. Whoever is behind it will be
exposed and prosecuted appropriately with others found involved in similar act.
We found a case of one person in Kaduna State who did not obtain UTME document
at all and did not write our examination but he went somewhere, forged result
and scored himself 380 and he was being celebrated before we exposed him, this
character will also be prosecuted, “he said.
Culprits’ confession
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) smashed
a syndicate which specialized in fake upgrade of results of candidates that
took the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). The syndicate
had opened a WhatsApp account to trick gullible candidates who wanted to
increase their score in order to have undeserved advantage. Parading a kingpin
and agent of the syndicate in Abuja, the Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, said
the culprit was arrested during a courtesy call by a delegation of Public
Complaints Commission (PCC).
The JAMB Registrar said the suspect named Adah Eche sat the
2019 UTME and scored 153 but decided to engage an examination syndicate to
increase his scores. The suspect who doubled as a middleman for the candidates
seeking higher scores collected huge sums of money from these candidates for
onward transmission to the syndicate. The Board got overwhelming evidence of
payments and banking transactions in connection with result upgrades during his
interrogation as well as other documents.
According to Prof Oloyede, “following the complaint by the
candidate and the visit to PCC, we decided to pick his letter of complaint and
two others to address their issues and he happened to be the first person we
picked and he actually wrote a letter of complaint to us knowing full well that
he faked his result.
What we did was to invite him to come and pick his admission
letter and he came. What such people do not know is that we have a bar code for
every result which helps us verify its authenticity but this fake one has the
barcode of a supermarket and was reading invalid barcode on our own platform.
“We have checked our own platform and seen that he has
checked his result three consecutive times via 55019 and was replied same
number of times with his original result which is 153, yet he insisted that he
did not know the one with 290 was fake.”
Prof. Oloyede said the suspect owned up to the crime when confronted
with overwhelming evidence of his criminal acts and printout of faked 200 score
for himself, before the purported upgrade to 290 which he claimed to have
originated from JAMB result checker code “55019”.
Detailed investigation revealed that Mr. Adah Eche was not
alone but had been patronised for possible illicit upgrade and faking of result
by some candidates whose names, registration numbers were made available to us
by Mr. Eche. The Board therefore withdraws and invalidates the results of the four
candidates found to have been involved in the illicit attempt to fake JAMB
result.
Also, on July 4 2019 JAMB apprehended one Cletus Kokowa for
‘upgrading’ his Unified Tertiary Matriculation Board (UTME) score from 162 to
206 with the aid of a fraudster. Kokowa with candidate registration number
95329290ED became the second candidate to be apprehended with the aid of an
intelligence gathering mechanism deployed by the Board after Adah Eche was
apprehended for a similar offence the previous month.
Kokowa confessed before the Management of the Board that he
paid ten thousand naira (N10, 000) to an examination syndicate to upgrade his
score after contacting them through a WhatsApp group a few weeks earlier. The
syndicate had informed him that his score could be upgraded from 162 to 206. He
added that the fraudsters later sent a fake result screenshot depicting the new
score of 206 to him.
During investigation, he said, “those guys sent a mail to me
that they could help me upgrade my score. I then sent them my registration
number and email. When the results were out, they sent a screenshot of 206
which they claimed was my score. Then, one of them called me asking me to pay
them their money. I later went to JAMB website to check and found my score was
still 162. I was confused. I had heard that upgrading scores is impossible, an
attempt to do it is an offence but I didn’t really believe it. I didn’t tell my
daddy and my uncle about my dealings with the syndicate.”
However, when Kokowa’s result remained unchanged, in the
JAMB portal, his father wrote a letter of complaint to the Registrar, Prof.
Is-haq Oloyede, stating, inter alia, that, “I am craving your indulgence to
quickly rectify the score to place my child on good stead to secure admission
in his second choice of institution because your inability to swiftly address
the issue at hand has led to forfeiture of my son’s Nigerian Defence Academy
admission opportunity”. The Board subsequently invited Kokowa who came with his
uncle, an army officer. After investigations, he confessed to the crime and was
handed over to law enforcement agents.
The Registrar said, “One of the popular claims candidates
usually make is that JAMB issued two different UTME results to them. It is not
true because their results were processed using cutting-edge information and
communication technology tools. When this boy came with his complaint, we
applied to appropriate quarters to furnish us with his records and it was
discovered that he had contacted fraudsters who gave him a fake result. In
fact, what we discovered was that the result given to him was a superimposition
of another candidate’s result on his own”.
Son of Professor of Medicine nabbed
Another candidate, Kingsley Unekwe, son of a Professor of
Medicine in one of the leading Nigerian universities was nabbed by the Board
for tampering with his UTME result. Unekwe has petitioned JAMB that he had been
issued two different results and was subsequently invited to come and
substantiate his claim. The Board, through its instruments and findings, was
able to establish, in the presence of his mother, that Unekwe had tampered with
his UTME result.
The young man thereafter confessed that he had contracted a
‘result upgrade’ syndicate to falsify his result. As a result, his original
score of 201 was jerked up to 269. This he did to enable him pursue his dream
of studying medicine at the university.
When asked as to why he engaged in the nefarious act, he
claimed it was the pressure from his parents that he should study medicine that
forced him to seek ways of falsifying his score as the original score from JAMB
would not get him into medicine. Unekwe pleaded guilty, feigning ignorance of
the seriousness of his crime and asked the Board to forgive him for his action.
Unekwe was the fifth candidate to be apprehended by the
Board for result falsification.
How I manipulated my score —Chinedu
Chinedu Ifesinachi John, a 2021 Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examination candidate, who had planned to study medicine at the
University of Nigeria, Nsukka, also confessed that the fear that he might not
be offered the programme of his choice with the score he had, propelled him to
alter his UTME result. On further interrogation, he stated that he used the
telephone number of his sister, Chinecheremi John Ifemkpa, and saved her number
as ‘55019’ a sort code used by JAMB for official communications with candidates
to create profiles, check UTME results among others. He added that he simply
used the number to send the edited result from his sister’s phone to his own
for it to appear as if it was sent by JAMB to substantiate his allegation of
multiple results.
The journey of his confession was very interesting and
dramatic. The first stage started with Chinedu alleging that in 2019, his JAMB
score was tampered with as well as his 2020 UTME.
Chinedu, a son of a contractor, had through his lawyer,
Barrister Akaiwe Ikeazor, petitioned JAMB alleging that the Board had tampered
with his 2021 UTME result while praying that he should be allowed to take the
UTME again. He claimed that the Board had issued him two results: the first
reading 380, while the second one was alleged to have been 265.
The Board ignored his letter knowing that he was parading a
manipulated result as the Board had already identified and flagged eleven
candidates including Chinedu, who had manipulated their 2021 UTME results and
forwarded same to the Vice-Chancellors of their chosen institutions. However,
when his lawyer wrote a second letter and threatened to press for N1billion
damages, the Board then felt that it was necessary for it to do the needful.
The Board therefore invited the candidate to come forward
with his lawyer and substantiate his claims. Poised to make its investigation
open and transparent to all stakeholders, the Board invited the Educational
Correspondents Association of Nigeria, Public Complaints Commission, the
Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Nigeria Human
Rights Commission, SERVICOM, representatives of security agencies, among
others, to witness the proceedings to ensure that fairness and equity were done
to all parties.
The Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, after listening to
Chinedu’s lawyer and father, who had accompanied him to the Board’s
Headquarters, gave the duo five minutes to meet privately with Chinedu to ask
him to confess his manipulation of the result and if he does not and the truth
is placed before him it will be too late as he would be handed over to the
police.
The second stage of the drama unfolded after the recommended
meeting with Chinedu and he had remained adamant. JAMB then asked him to
present his evidence as he claimed that a text message was sent to him. When he
showed the message on his phone, the technical team knew the message was faked
as one of the security features was absent, a signature sign, featured by other
messages that emanated from the Board’s 55019.
JAMB went further by calling for the history of its
communications with Chinedu from the Telco number being used by Chinedu. The
details of all messages sent to him were displayed from the creation of profile
for registration up to the request for the result and what was sent to him. It
was at this stage that his lawyer got a rude awakening to the futility of the
case. Furthermore, it was in the course of the proceedings that it came to
light that Chinedu must be one of those candidates thrown up by tutorial
centres and when confronted with this fact, he confessed that he belonged to a
tutorial group. The modus operandi of the group was to promise candidates all
kinds of scores.
It was, therefore, owing to the refusal of the candidate to
own up to his crime, that the Board, through its security instruments, had
proceeded to establish, in the presence of all that the message sent to Chinedu
came from a phone number saved as ‘55019’ which, as he later confessed,
belonged to his sister who was also a UTME candidate.
A pensive and remorseful Chinedu pleaded guilty to the crime
after he was confronted with the facts of what he had done as he pleaded for
clemency. Chinedu had then turned towards his father, who had vowed that his
son could not do anything untoward, “I’m so sorry for putting you through this
embarrassing situation.
I was afraid I’ll not get the programme I wanted and had to
do this, I’ve learnt my lesson.” He said, “In 2021, I decided to leave medicine
and surgery for them. So I picked petroleum engineering. When the result came
it was not what I expected. To ensure that I succeeded in getting the Board to
reschedule me for another examination, I used my sister’s telephone number
which I had saved as 55019, type the results that bore 380 and sent it to
myself.” Chinedu, who had sat the 2019, 2020 and 2021 UTME, had disclosed that
he had wanted to study medicine and surgery at the University of Ibadan in 2019
and 2020.
Baffled by the confession of his client, the lawyer said, “I
am shocked and very embarrassed by this boy’s attitude. I had asked him several
times but he kept telling me lies. This circumstance has further enhanced my
belief in the credibility of JAMB as an institution and Prof. Oloyede as an
epitome of integrity. However, I plead for mercy for my client.”
By Omeiza Ajayi & Joseph Erunke -Vanguard
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