THE House of Representatives has asked the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to reverse its decision to barr a candidate, Mmesoma Ejikeme, suspected of result forgery, from taking the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) for the next three years.
The lawmakers issued the directive during plenary on Wednesday, July 5.
The legislators also set up an ad hoc committee to investigate the allegation of result falsification. The ad hoc committee will also investigate JAMB facilities.
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The House of Representatives called for independent examiners to inspect Ejikeme’s scripts and determine her actual score.
The decision to investigate the allegations came after the lawmaker representing Andoni/Opobo/Nkoro constituency Awaji-Inombek Abiante presented a motion titled ‘Call to investigate alleged manipulation of Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, (JAMB), by Miss Ejikeme.
“Miss Ejikeme Mmesoma of Anglican Girls Secondary School, Nnewi, Anambra State, sat for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations and scored 362. On 2 July 2023, JAMB, Head of Public Affairs and Protocol, Dr Fabian Benjamin, made a public pronouncement accusing Miss Ejikeme Mmesoma of manipulating her UTME results that she actually scored 249 instead of the 362 as claimed.
“Miss. Ejikeme Mmesoma came out to defend herself, that she actually printed the result from the JAMB portal and had been a brilliant child all through her nursery and tertiary education, coming first in all the examinations she had been taken before the UTME, hence she posited that she is not capable of manipulating her UTME result,” Abiante said on Wednesday.
Ejikeme had been celebrated for emerging as the overall best candidate for the 2023 UTME.
JAMB disputed Ejikeme’s result a few days later, describing it as falsified, and barred her from taking the examination for three years.
In an earlier statement released on Sunday, July 2, the examination body announced that Ejikeme originally scored 249 and manipulated the result to secure scholarships fraudulently.
Ijeoma Opara is a journalist with The ICIR. Reach her via vopara@icirnigeria.org or @ije_le on Twitter.