By Izunna Okafor, Awka
The 16-year-old Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma, who was accused of falsifying and inflating her 2023 UTME score to 362 and parading herself as the highest scorer, has finally opened up and cleared the air on what actually transpired.
Mmesoma, in a video of her interview on the controversy trailing her said she was traumatized by the scandal flying around with her name.
While displaying her result she said she printed directly from JAMB website with an aggregate score of 362; Mmesoma, who denied forging her result, also said that she was a brilliant and had been taking First position since her nursery school. She also said she score over 300 in her Common Entrance examination.
The former student of the Anglican Girls’ Secondary School, Nnewi, also narrated how she, her school Principal and the Education Secretary of the Anglican Diocese of Nnewi, went to visit the State Commissioner for Education in her office in Awka, Anambra State capital, on Friday, with the result.
She said the Commissioner took picture of the result and sent to the JAMB officials; adding that shortly after that, the officers of the Department of State Service (DSS) came to the office and were told to investigate the result.
She further regretted that while they were still expecting the outcome of the investigation, JAMB declared and started publicizing that she manipulated and faked her result, without waiting for the DSS to conclude their investigation and make the outcome known.
Mmesoma also said she was not capable of doing what JAMB accused her of doing.
She said: “I am Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma. I am the owner of this result. I went to JAMB portal to print this result and this is what they gave me. This is the result here. This is my aggregate, 362. This is exactly how I downloaded it from that site. So, they (JAMB) now saying I forged my result is what I don’t know; and I’m traumatized that they accused me of forging my own result.
“I am not capable of forging results. This is the evidence. The QR code on the result was scanned and it showed another name, a Yoruba name, Omotola Afolabi, 138. That same person that got 138, they checked again and the person scored 238; meaning that there is problem somewhere.”
Continuing she said, “…We showed this result to the Commissioner of Education, both this one and the SMS they sent to me. So, she snapped it and sent to the JAMB officials. They called back, saying that this was a forged result, that I forged it myself, that the JAMB office doesn’t have a record of this.
“They called the DSS over to come to her office. The DSS took us to their office and we made our statement there. The DSS said they would contact us later, that they are going to investigate this result to know where it came from.
“Instead of them (JAMB) to wait for the investigation to be over, they posted that I forged without confirming. I’m really really sad about it.”
