Mmesoma Ejikeme, the embattled candidate of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), has pleaded with the board not to hold her solely responsible for the confusion surrounding her result, admitting that her actual score was 249 instead of the earlier claimed 362.
During an appearance on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, the 19-year-old student from Anambra expressed her desire for clarification. She reached out to the JAMB Support System via text message, urging them to investigate and rectify the situation, stating that the discrepancy could be found in their system.
Mmesoma also criticized JAMB’s decision to impose a three-year ban on her, emphasizing that she should not be held accountable for the printing error that led to allegations of result forgery. She believed the ban was unjust.
Previously, Mmesoma had declared that she achieved the highest score in JAMB, presenting a UTME result slip displaying a score of 362. However, the board maintained that she falsified her result and had conducted a thorough investigation before reaching their conclusion.
JAMB spokesperson, Fabian Benjamin, confirmed this in a statement released on Tuesday. He stated that due to the significant violation committed by Mmesoma Ejikeme, the board had nullified her 2023 UTME result and imposed a three-year ban on her from future examinations.
Benjamin reiterated that the UTME result being circulated by Mmesoma was counterfeit and described her account as an attempt to distort the truth. He pointed out that Mmesoma inadvertently revealed the true owner of the result slip when she acknowledged that the QR code on it belonged to another candidate named “Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle” who scored 138 in the 2021 UTME.
To dispel any doubts, Benjamin encouraged the public to scan the QR code on the result slip to verify its actual owner before it was altered. He further clarified that the board had discontinued issuing Notification of Result slips after the 2021 UTME due to widespread falsification. Since 2022, they have been providing official UTME RESULT Slips containing each candidate’s photograph.
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