The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has disclosed that a candidate for the exam identified as Ejikeme Mmesoma had manipulated her results to parade herself as UTME Top scorer to get various scholarships.
According to JAMB who is set to prosecute the young woman, the Anambra based student had altered her result from 249 to 362 in the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
The culprit was uncovered after she’d already secured a N3M scholarship from INNOSON motors CEO Chief Innocent Chukwuma on the basis of the manipulated results.
She was also set to receive honors from the Anambra state Government who had sought to verify her claim from JAMB, thus discovering the scam which includes manipulation of a result which doesn’t change on the official site.
The examination body said it also uncovered one Atung Gerald from Kaduna State, who never sat the exam, but claimed to have scored 380.
This was disclosed in a statement on Sunday by JAMB spokesman, Dr Fabian Benjamin.
He said,
“The attention of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board 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 Innocent Chukwuma.
“She was even set to be honoured 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 362 she claimed.
“She had manipulated her UTME result to deceive the public to fraudulently obtain scholarship and other recognitions.”
On the case of Gerald, who claimed to have scored 380, JAMB said,
“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 not to talk of sitting the examination.”
JAMB said,
“With this her ignoble act, Miss Mmesoma would be prosecuted and her original result withdrawn. This is not all, as the board would, in due course, investigate all candidates laying claims to higher scores than they actually obtained.
“Once discovered, such candidates’ original results would be withdrawn forthwith and they would be handed over to relevant security agencies for prosecution.”
It has been disclosed that the true highest scorer of the 2023 UTME is another candidate also from Anambra Nkechinyere Umeh who scored 360.
