‘I Printed My Result From JAMB Portal’

THE Anambra State Government has set up a panel of inquiry into the controversy following the highest scorer in the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

The state Commissioner for Education, Prof. Ngozi Chuma-Udeh, who announced this in a statement in Awka, on Monday, July 3, said: “A panel of inquiry has been set up to work with security agents to investigate the allegation of falsification of result levelled against Mmesoma Ejikeme, who had earlier been showcased in the social media as having scored the highest.”

The commissioner described the controversy over Ejikeme’s actual result as embarrassing, especially coming at a time Governor Chukwuma Soludo was repositioning the education sector in the state.

Ejikeme, a student of Anglican Girls Secondary School, Uruagu in Nnewi, had earlier been celebrated for emerging with the highest score of 362 in the 2023 UTME, a result later described by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) as fake.

JAMB, in a statement on Sunday, July 2, alleged that Ejikeme inflated her actual result from 249 to 362, vowing to prosecute her and others that allegedly manipulated their results.

Meanwhile, the state government has hailed another candidate in the examination, Nkechinyere Umeh, also from Anambra State, who was declared by JAMB as the actual highest scorer nationwide, with a cumulative mark of 360 in the 2023 UTME.

In a related development, Ejikeme has dismissed JAMB’s allegations that she manipulated her result to “deceive the public to fraudulently obtain a scholarship and other recognitions.”

Speaking in a video online, Ejikeme insisted that she printed her result from JAMB portal, saying the allegation has left her traumatised, because she was not capable of forging her own result.

According to her: “I am the owner of this result. I went to JAMB portal to print this result and this is what they gave me. This is my aggregate, 362. This is exactly how I printed it out and downloaded from the site.

“So, the fact that they are now saying I forged the result is what I don’t know. I am traumatised that they accused me of forging my own result. This is because I am not capable of forging my own result.

“This is the evidence. They said that I forged my result. They scanned this QR code then and it showed another name, a Yoruba name, Omotola Afolabi, 138. And that same person that scored 138, they checked again, the person score 338. Meaning that there is problem somewhere.

“And we went to the commissioner for Education’s office last week Friday, with my principal and the educational secretary of Anglican Secondary School Girls of Anglican Diocese. We went there and showed this result to the commissioner. She snapped it and sent it to the JAMB officials.

“They called back and said this is a forged result, that I forged it myself, that the JAMB office don’t have the record of this.

“They now said that I forged it and called the DSS over. The DSS took us to their office and we made our statements there and said they will contact us later, that they are going to investigate this result to know where the source came from.

“So, instead of them to wait for the investigation to be over, they posted that I forged the result without confirming. I am really sad about it.

“Since my nursery school, I have been taking first. It’s not that I am an illiterate girl to go and forge my result. Even in my common entrance exam, I scored three hundred and something.”