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Ejikeme Mmesoma, a student of Anglican Girls Secondary School, Nnewi, Anambra State, who was accused of inflating her Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) result, has stated that the same result was printed from the JAMB portal.
JAMB had explained how it discovered that Mmesoma Ejikeme who paraded herself as the top scorer of the 2023 UTME forged her result.
This was disclosed by JAMB spokesperson, Dr Fabian Benjamin during an exclusive interview on Monday.
Benjamin had said the candidate, Ejikeme, went to the extent of manipulating a text message sent to her from JAMB to cover her real UTME result.
The examination body said its investigation revealed that Ejikeme manipulated a result belonging to a 2021 UTME candidate, named Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle, who scored 138 and edited it to 362 with her bio.
But speaking on Monday, the student in a video said she printed her result from JAMB portal, adding that she was not capable of forging her result.
She said she had always been a brilliant pupil, who had secured first position from primary school days.
Mmesoma said she was invited to the police station where her statement was taken, and she was told that investigation was ongoing.
She said she felt traumatised by the incident, adding that, “there must be a problem somewhere”.
Benjamin added that Ejikeme’s original result which was sent to her via SMS through 55019 is 249. He added that the candidate went ahead to edit the text message in order to mislead people that the actual result she received from JAMB was 362.
“Let me tell you what she did. The candidate sent SMS 55019 to check the result. If you want to do a diligent job as an investigative journalist, let me give you a lead you can use. Ask her to send her phone number. When she sends you the phone number, call the telco and tell them, ‘Please, can you send us the messages between her and 55019?’ If you do that, you will get the truth of everything.”
“She actually sent a request to 55019, 249 result was sent to her (as her UTME score). She edited the result (249) to 362 and sent the result back to 55019. That is the message she is sending to you,” Benjamin stated.
The JAMB spokesperson also confirmed Umeh Nkechinyere as the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations top scorer with a cumulative mark of 360.