The 19-year-old candidate in the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board in the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination who rejected his score of 265 has been handed the Police for investigation.
Chinedu Ifesinachi John claimed he scored 380 in the examination conducted in June this year and was surprised to receive 265 from the board after the results were released.
Master John claimed that his UTME scores from 2019 till 2021 had been “altered” by the board, thereby denying him the opportunity to study his desired course – medicine.
Consequently, following the alleged “alteration” of the UTME score, his father, John Ifenkpam approached an Enugu-based lawyer, Ikeazor Akaiwe who wrote to JAMB for another opportunity for the boy to retake the examination and demanded N1 billion as damages.
The lawyer said the N1 billion was to cover for the physical and emotional trauma the boy had gone through from being offered “two separate scores.”
On Friday, the candidate, his father and lawyers travelled down to Abuja from Enugu state following an invitation from the management of the board led by the Registrar of JAMB, Prof Is-haq Oloyede.
The boy who was given few minutes to “come clean” in a closed session with his father and lawyers about the results he was parading, insisted that his original score from the examination was 380.
After going back and forth, the board tendered evidence to counter the claim by John and his legal representatives.
Oloyede accused the candidate of result tempering, adding that he will be handed over to the police for investigation and subsequently prosecuted and his result would be withdrawn pending the end of the investigation.
The registrar said: “We have 11 of them who tampered with their results. Two of them are already being prosecuted. The remaining ones we are going to withdraw their results and prosecute them. The main purpose is to sanitise the system, including our own staff.”
His lawyer, Ikeazor said: “I will not stand against the investigation. Let there be an investigation but what I will not agree to is to prejudge him.”
However, after the candidate was paraded for forging the result, he confessed that he saved his sister’s number on his phone as 55019 and used the phone to send the fake result.
