The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that several students who sat for the exam inflated their results in the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
A particular case was that of a female student, Ejikeme Mmesoma , from Anambra state who allegedly inflated her scores to 362 and unknowingly to the public, was regarded as the student with the highest score in the recently concluded exam and was awarded N3m by the chairman of Innoson Motors.
JAMB made this known in a statement released on Sunday evening.
The board said it would withdraw her result and prosecute her for tampering with its result.
The statement reads:
The attention of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has been drawn to several publications in both print and online media celebrating certain candidates for being high scorers in the 2023 UTME.
The Board is constrained to set the records straight and wishes to state unequivocally that many of the results which many of these candidates are parading are fake. In many instances, some of these candidates had actually obtained far lower scores than they are 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 Joy Mmesoma, who claimed to have scored 362 in the 2023 UTME and was awarded a N3m scholarship by Chief (Dr.) Innocent Chukwuma.
She was even 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 Miss Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma had actually scored 249 and not the 362 she claimed. She had manipulated her UTME result to deceive the public and fraudulently obtain scholarships and other recognition.
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 honors on candidates without confirming from the Board.
A similar case was that of one Atung Gerald in Kaduna, who claimed to have scored 380. His ethnic group had taken the issue up, requesting that he should be given special recognition, only for the Board to disappoint them with the incontestable fact that Atung never obtained the 2023 UTME application documents, let alone sitting the examination.
The Board would, therefore, advise the public to always cross-check these claims by candidates with the Board before rushing to honor them with undeserving awards, as certain software has been created to fake their version of their results and put the same out in the public space for fun, and this is what the sponsors of these candidates are using to defraud good-spirited Nigerians such as Dr. Innocent, the founder of Innoson Motors, who sincerely desires to celebrate academic excellence by investing in the education of a young Nigerian.
We commend the likes of Dr. Innocent Chukwuma and wish to encourage other Nigerians who desire to invest in the future of genuine youngsters to never be discouraged but to always ensure that they get the authentic results from the Board, as done by the Anambra State Ministry of Education. Otherwise, they will be celebrating criminality, as this is just another new fraudulent method in town. However, these candidates only succeed in manipulating what they are holding, as the authentic results are with the Board and will be transmitted to their schools of choice at the appropriate time.
It should be noted that Miss Mmesoma 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, as nothing can change that. With this ignoble act, Miss Mmesoma will be prosecuted, and her original result will be withdrawn. This is not all, as the Board will, in due course, investigate all candidates claiming higher scores than they actually obtained. Once discovered, such candidates’ original results will be withdrawn immediately, and they will be handed over to relevant security agencies for prosecution.”
