When the Mmesoma Joy Ejikeme melodrama premiered about a fortnight ago I refrained from joining the flow of the “madding crowd” that followed the plot. My reason: we had watched only the first scene of Act One when the crowd erupted into an uproar “Crucify JAMB, Crucify JAMB”. A summary of the actions in the opening scene will be this: Ejikeme, supposedly a 16-year-old final year student in senior secondary school in Anambra state, had claimed a score of 362 in the 2023 University and Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), conducted by JAMB. It was apparently the highest score nationwide. She went on to submit the result to an automobile assembly firm, Innoson Vehicles, which pledged a N3m scholarship to the candidate with the highest. She did grab the award.
However, JAMB reacted, saying Mmesoma didn’t score 362 in the university admission examination but 249. In other words, she faked the result, using a result template that JAMB had abandoned since 2021. Besides, the 16 years she gave as her age in the result she presented to the ministry of education in Anambra state was untrue; her real age was 19. Act One ends and curtain lowered.
In Act Two, we see the knives are out and the cry “Crucify JAMB, Crucify JAMB!” rings out. Ejikeme claims she is a victim of institutional injustice. She is supported by her father who says his daughter is well brought up. Her school says she is an A1 material. Oby Ekwesilieze, a former Nigerian education minister, calls for an independent probe into an injustice done to a brilliant 16-year old GIRL. The Federal House of Representatives resolves to set up an adhoc committee to handle “this matter of immediate urgency”. In the headiness of the moment, minister and House forget that JAMB, by law, is empowered to punish exam cheats, just as universities have the power to expel a cheating undergrad even in his third year.
Act Three provides the cathartic actions and the denouement of the drama. Anambra government decides to take the matter in hand by raising a panel to speak with JAMB and its purported victim, Mmesoma. It deliberates for long and in the end, produces these findings: “1. The results released by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) with respect to the UTME score of Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma is 249. 2. The result paraded by Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma with an aggregate score of 362 is fake as buttressed by the very significant and instructive variations In the registration number, date of birth, centre name and other infractions. Mmesoma admitted that she manipulated the fake result herself, using her phone.” The committee’s recommendations are: “1. That Elikeme Joy Mmesoma tender an unreserved written apology to the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (AMB), the School (Anglican Girls Secondary School, Uruagu Nnew) and the Anambra State Government. This should be done immediately.
“2. Elikeme Joy Mmesoma should undergo psychological counselling and therapy. 3 All prospective candidates for JAMB Admission should adhere strictly to guidelines, processes and procedures of the examination body.The Committee of Inquiry commends Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for their diligent handling of the matter and the information supplied about the interface with the candidate (see attached). We hope that this unearthing of the truth as we have discovered will go a long way in correcting the sentiments, misconceptions and deceptions that have been in the public domain.”
The report, as it were, opened “the eyes of understanding” of defenders of Mmesoma as “one of us”. Firstly, her father Romans. Initially presenting his daughter as a faultless angel, he now said, in the light of the revelations about her, he regretted “all my (previous) comments and actions”. “My daughter didn’t open up to me on time. When I realized what she did, I regretted all my earlier actions on this matter. I apologize to Nigerians and JAMB. I still beg JAMB and Nigerians to pardon her”, he said. To the management of Mmesoma’s school, the cathartic experience is one of “dismay”. Mmesoma isn’t any longer the first rate brain they believed her to be.
And the denouement. Innoson Vehicles promptly cancelled the 3 million naira university scholarship it had awarded to Mmesoma. It said in a statement, “The findings from the rigorous investigation have now confirmed that Miss Mmesoma did manipulate her UTME result.This conclusion is deeply disappointing and stands in direct contravention of the values we hold dear at Innoson Vehicles, particularly those that underscore our scholarship programme.” As for JAMB, it stuck to its earlier cancellation of Mmesoma’s original 249 UTME score and her debarment for 3 years to sit for the examination again. Why it chooses this course of action over prosecution which, if successful, would put the young lady in jail for seven years, it doesn’t say.
All finished and dusted? Emh emh! Not quite. The small matter of Mmesoma does raise bigger societal issues. 1. Parental control over kids has lost ground to external influences. 2. We are too quick to reward success, ignoring the “face” of it or (and) how it comes. 3. Crime, like every other human activity, does not know age. As it is said, age is just a number. 4. We pass judgement too prematurely, not waiting till we have all the fact at our fingertips. We’ll do well to hearken to a man of God’s advice to be “quick to listen, slow to speak”.
To conclude, let me quote writer Joseph Conrad on man’s tendency to criminality: “It seems impossible to believe that mere greed could hold men to such a steadfastness of purpose, to such a blind persistence in endeavour….” Again, he says, “The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.” Mmesoma, though still young, demonstrated “steadfastness of purpose” in her “breach of faith with the community of mankind”, and so she deserves the stiffest penalty the law prescribes in her case. She has made it even more odious by her refusal to apologize to JAMB. Take up the plumb line, shall we!
