One Miss Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma from Anambra State with Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) registration number 202330639047FF is currently in the eye of the storm on allegations of result padding.
Over the last 48 hours or so, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and the suspect seem to be singing the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s track “Authority Stealing,” “You be thief (I no be thief), you be robber (I no be robber).
The word padding became popularised in the Nigerian lexicon a few years back when a budget padding scandal hit the National Assembly and ever since the word has remained ingrained.
People have been falsifying results for a very long time. The only difference is that we didn’t have the internet and social media then so if a teacher or parent maybe, caught a child who had added one zero to their score to increase it or struck out a number from their class position to make them appear more brilliant, they’ll punish the child, usually by flogging and it’ll end within the school or home, without going viral.
Result padding is one of the ills that society is contending with. People go to any length to get false results which they parade for various reasons. Children, aided by their parents are also involved.
Recently, however, examination bodies are deploying technology and other innovations to do away with result manipulation and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), which administers the UTME is one such organisation.
It is with the help of such technology that JAMB has detected and is calling out 16-year-old Ejikeme for alleged result manipulation.
The examination body in a recent statement announced that it had withdrawn the suspect’s result for allegedly manipulating the same.
Ejikeme claimed to have scored an aggregate of 362 in the examination. A result slip she has tendered as proof of her claim, printed on May 14, 2023, shows that she scored 98 in Use of English, 94 in Biology, 89 in Physics and 81 in Chemistry. Following her impressive feat, the Chairman of Innoson Vehicles Manufacturing Company, Innocent Chukwuma awarded her a scholarship of N3 million.
The Anambra State government was also in the process of rewarding her before the whole brouhaha.
JAMB alleged that Ejikeme and others like her, including one Atung Gerald from Kaduna State who claimed to have scored 380 in the 2023 examination, were using “funny software packages to manipulate their results to deceive unsuspecting members of the public.”
JAMB said the bubble of Ejikeme, who was set to be honoured by the Anambra State government, burst when a top government official reached out to the Board to confirm her result and that was when it was revealed that she actually scored 249 in the examination and not 362 as claimed.
According to JAMB, she had sent a message to the Board’s platform to request her UTME result, after which she manually inflated her scores and superimposed the same on the 2022 UTME result sheet using certain software which had been created to produce results and put out same in the public space for fun.
The examination body claims that the slip on which Ejikeme’s result is printed is that of 2021 which it already changed. It said following issues of manipulation, it had to stop issuing notifications of results with which she parades, but now issues actual result slips with candidates’ photos.
There are so many questions I’ve been asking myself since this issue got into the public domain.
What level of discontentment will make a child of 16 go to such lengths to deceive the unsuspecting public?
Is it the quest for social media validation or what?
The documents that have so far been released by Ejikeme to prove her case have also raised some questions.
There is a QR code on the result’s printout being broadcast but when it is scanned; it brings up the result for one Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle, who scored 138 in the examination. According to JAMB, Asimiyu sat for its examination in 2021 and what Ejikeme did was to superimpose her information on the slip with that QR code.
How is it that her slip bears a different person’s QR code?
Why is she the only one who has a result notification slip and not the actual UTME result slip in 2023?
The message she shared showing her claimed result, purportedly from JAMB, is aligned to the phone’s right side. However, on most Android phones, received messages are aligned to the left, while sent messages align to the right.
As if this is not enough, whereas she is reported to be from Anambra state, the origin section on the paraded slip shows she’s from Enugu. Additionally, a comparison of the registration number on the result slip and the phone screenshot shows some disparity. While the one on the slip ends in the alphabet FF, the one on the screenshot reads EE, leaving one to wonder if she had two registration numbers for the same examination.
It is also curious that Ejikeme with 362 points maintained loud silence when JAMB declared Umeh Nkechinyere with 360 points as the candidate with the highest score for the 2023 examination. The Board went on to name five other top scorers with Ejikeme’s name conspicuously missing in the list yet she, her parents or guardian neither raised an objection nor brought it to the attention of the board that it was making a mistake.
Was she going to allow herself to be cheated out of her deserved recognition?
I have seen a video where she confidently stated her position. Could it be she’s saying the truth or did she fall victim of a result manipulation syndicate?
While the act of debauchery as allegedly carried out by Ejikeme if found to be true after investigation, is reprehensible and should be condemned by all right-thinking members of the public, I consider it shameful that some persons, especially on social media, are already giving it ethnic colouration, saying the only reason she is being called out is because she is from the South East region.
Nothing can be more puerile, farther from the truth and unfounded.
Umeh who according to JAMB, scored the highest in the examination with an aggregate of 360 points, is also Igbo from Anambra so what exactly are they talking about?
Is it possible for JAMB to willfully allocate one person’s scores to another?
Why would the Board do that? What does the Board have against her or any other student for that matter, that does well in its examination?
While it is impossible for any organisation, especially when human beings are involved, to get it 100 per cent all the time, it is on record that JAMB as presently led is one of the most efficient agencies in Nigeria today. This is an organisation that has prosecuted its staff for getting involved in corrupt practices and aiding examination malpractice.
With the innovation, particularly in the last six years, even human error has been reduced to the barest minimum.
JAMB, I cannot imagine, will set out on a mission to call out a fraud if it does not have incontrovertible evidence.
Nevertheless, it is now her word against JAMB, and an independent forensic investigation may be required to settle the matter, and when it is established that there was a case of willful manipulation of results, it is my hope that the culprit will be prosecuted to serve as a deterrent to others but beyond prosecuting her, those she worked with should also be prosecuted.
While children her age these days, aided by technology, do things that leave the jaws of not a few adults dropping, the way I see it, she may not have been up to this mischief all by herself. The searchlight, therefore, needs to be beamed on adults around her who may have aided her in committing the alleged crime.
And if it is also established that JAMB erred, the Board should apologise and be made to compensate her in a manner commensurate with the opprobrium she must have suffered.
The verdict has already been passed by ‘netizens and JAMB is guilty.
For the sake of integrity and the examination it conducts, it is my hope that they will be proven wrong.
Thankfully, JAMB has said it is ready for genuine scrutiny to vindicate itself.
I only hope that if this happens, JAMB will still not be blamed for the manipulation of its results by fraudulent candidates.
