A candidate who took part in the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) organised by Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is currently being held by the police for allegedly upgrading his result from 162 to 206.

Twenty- year- old Cletus Ayibantoye Kokowas who sat for the matriculation examination on April 11, 2019 in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State was paraded before journalists on Thursday at the Headquarters of JAMB after it was discovered that he engaged the services of a syndicate to falsify his result.

Cletus, however, ran into trouble after using the Board’s approved USSD code of 55019 to check his result and realised he scored 162 out of the total score of 400 and sought the services of a syndicate to upgrade the score to 2016.

The JAMBITE who was accompanied to the JAMB headquarters in Abuja from Yenagoa was cross-examined by officials of the Board who confronted him with documented evidence of his actual performance in the UTME.

He confessed that the syndicate had sent him a message that his result could be upgraded with certain marks if he could pay N10, 000.

The board’s record showed that he had checked his result using the USSD code on 15 occasions with all the datelines.

When asked to show the SMS he sent to JAMB to check his result, Cletus said it has been deleted from his phone, noting that the phone he used did not belong to him. But he however presented a screen shot of the 206 which the board said it discovered was an imposition of another figure.

“I didn’t know how it came about but they inbox me that they can really help me to upgrade my score,” Cletus confessed.

“I asked them if they can prove it. I sent them my registration number and email address that if they can do it, they should prove it.”

He said when the result was out and he checked it, “it was 206 then,” adding, “he called me that he had upgraded it that I should pay him the money, and I said I did not have the money.”

Cletus said he came to the JAMB headquarters to check the record if his score was 162 or 206, and if the syndicate was right or he was being fraudulent.

While he never told his father, Kokowa Honn Garen, of his arrangement with a syndicate to upgrade his score so that he could be admitted to the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), he insisted that the examination Board reduced his result from 206 to 162.

His father in a letter dated June 21, 2019, addressed to the Registrar of JAMB applying for the rectification of Cletus’ JAMB score also maintained that his son’s result was changed from 206 to 162.

Noting that his son checked his result with the same USSD code 55019 on May 12, and his total score was 206, Garen lamented that some days later, when Cletus went to access the NDA portal to obtain his examination card, he was denied access on the ground illegality.

“It was then to his greatest dismay, he discovered that his JAMB score 206 has been changed to 162,” the father wrote in the letter.

“He complained this change to JAMB office, Bayelsa State Branch and was told to direct his complaints to National Headquarters in Abuja.”

The father said the examination board’s inability to respond swiftly to all the complaints on the change of score had led to his son’s forfeiture of his NDA admission opportunity even as he pleaded for the rectification of the score so that he could have a good stand for his second choice of institution.

However, speaking on the matter, JAMB Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede said the board encouraged the candidate to come and prove his case with the promise to foot his hotel accommodation and transport bill.

He said the candidate would be handed over to the security operatives for proper investigation.

“When we started interrogating him, the boy confessed what he did. We are saying anybody that has a complaint should come forward,” Oloyede said.

“We cancelled results when candidates do what they are not supposed to do, but this one has forged result and cancelling result is not the punishment.”´

Oloyede lamented that the country is in serious trouble if candidates like Cletus succeeded in gaining admission with such forged results.

He said that there has been a campaign of calumny against the board by some individuals whom he said have vested interest based on the outcome of 2019 UTME.

According to him, about 80 people are currently being prosecuted for such offence, noting that the board under his watch would not rest in the fight against organised syndicates who are falsifying results.

The JAMB Registrar would not be intimidated into silence by those he said are behind the campaign to smear his name and that of the board.