…says the candidate, not the only one detected for forgery
The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, on Tuesday, said the Board had concluded investigations on the case of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination candidate, Mmesoma Ejikeme, who was accused of fraudulently inflating her 2023 UTME score.
Oloyede made this disclosure in a transcript sent to our correspondent from Windhoek, Namibia.
He said, “The truth is that JAMB has concluded the investigation on Nmesoma’s score falsification matter. She was not the only one caught, just that others have chosen not to go out”, Oloyede said.
“Presently, there is an industry faking results and unfortunately they cannot penetrate the JAMB system, the reasons being that (our) system is foolproofed and we will prove it any time. It is unfortunate that parents and some of the candidates that are being fooled are not aware that they are only being fooled.
“There is internal evidence to show that the change in Ejikeme’s scores was done with her collaboration. There are certain features pertaining to her that only she knows unless she makes it available to somebody else. They couldn’t have increased her scores on her behalf.”
The Registrar said he had earlier spoken with a former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, on Nmesoma’s matter, and told her that it was a high-level scam.
“We improved our facilities this year, so Ejikeme and her collaborators are still living in the past. I spoke with Mrs Ezekwesili on the matter and I told her that it is a high-level scam and I told her that it was a careless forgery.
“This is because we are no longer using some of the things they used in changing those results since 2021. We used that pattern in 2021 and you saw what happened and many of such individuals were caught as well and they were treated accordingly,” he stated.
Punch