JAMB Bans Mmesona For 3years Over UTME Fraud

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board announced that it has barred Anambra student Mmesoma Ejikeme from sitting any exams administered by the board for three years after she was charged with falsifying her results for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

The board added that it had conducted in-depth investigations before coming to the decision that the Anambra student had fabricated her results in order to pass.

This information was provided in a statement made on Tuesday by JAMB spokesperson Fabian Benjamin.

According to him, “In the meantime, the management of the Board, after considering the weighty infraction committed by Ms. Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma, and in line with its established procedures, has withdrawn her 2023 UTME result and also barred her from sitting the Board’s examination for the next three years.

Benjamin again reiterated the board’s earlier position that the UTME result being paraded by Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma was fake saying the candidates’ account was an attempt to re-write the truth.

“Consequently, the Board would like to reassure Nigerians that its system was neither tampered with nor compromised as the candidate simply falsified a copy of a result slip of a candidate named “Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle”, who sat the UTME in 2021 and scored 138. It is also instructive to note that the candidate, in her statement, has inadvertently revealed the rightful owner of the result she is parading when she pointed out that the QR code on the result slip showed the actual owner of the said result before she peddled a lie in an attempt to obfuscate the truth.

“To witness the unassailable position of the Board regarding this obvious falsehood, the general public is, therefore, urged to endeavour to scan the QR code on the result slip to see its actual owner before it was mutilated. It is to be noted that the QR code encapsulates the UTME result of each candidate, hence, what is on the result sheet is nothing other than the interpretation of the information on this QR code.

“Furthermore, the public is also to note that the Board stopped issuing Notification of Result slips after the 2021 UTME for the simple reason that candidates were falsifying them. Consequently, the Board has been issuing actual UTME RESULT Slips (not notification of results ) since 2022 complete with the photograph of each candidate,” he said.

Speaking about the negative exposure the entire affair has brought the board, Benjamin indicated that it was unconcerned because such fictitious accusations had been made before.

He recalled an incident from 2021 in which John Chinedu Ifesinachi, a candidate, threatened to sue the Board for N2 billion in damages. However, when the candidate later confessed to his crime in the face of undeniable facts in an open investigation watched by several national public institutions, including the Public Complaints Commission, National Human Rights Commission, Federal Competition and Consumer Prot.

The board, meanwhile, regretted the different colouration added by some “unwholesome” interests who are ready to lead the candidate to a destructive end, urging those doing that to retract.