Ejikeme Mmesoma, a student of Anglican Girls Secondary School in Nnewi, Anambra State, has responded to accusations of inflating her Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) result, stating that the same result was printed from the JAMB portal.
On Monday, Idan News reported that JAMB had uncovered the forgery of Mmesoma Ejikeme’s UTME result, who had presented herself as the top scorer of the 2023 UTME. Dr. Fabian Benjamin, the spokesperson for JAMB, disclosed this information during an exclusive interview.
According to Benjamin, Ejikeme went as far as manipulating a text message sent to her from JAMB in order to disguise her actual UTME result. The investigation conducted by the examination body revealed that Ejikeme had altered the result of a 2021 UTME candidate named Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle, who originally scored 138, and edited it to 362, along with her own details.
However, in a video statement on Monday, Mmesoma refuted the allegations and claimed that she had printed her result directly from the JAMB portal. She emphasized that she was incapable of forging her result and highlighted her academic excellence, mentioning that she had consistently secured the first position since her primary school days.
Mmesoma also shared that she was summoned to the police station, where she provided her statement, and was informed that an investigation was underway. Expressing her distress over the incident, she stated, “there must be a problem somewhere.”
Addressing the matter, Benjamin further revealed that the original result sent to Ejikeme through SMS from the number 55019 was 249. He asserted that the candidate had proceeded to alter the text message to mislead others into believing that her actual JAMB result was 362. Benjamin provided a suggestion to investigative journalists, advising them to request Ejikeme’s phone number and contact the telecommunications company to obtain the message exchange between her and 55019, which would uncover the truth.
Additionally, the JAMB spokesperson confirmed Umeh Nkechinyere as the top scorer of the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations, attaining a cumulative mark of 360.