‘I printed my result from JAMB portal’ — Anambra pupil accused of forgery breaks silence

Ejikeme Mmesoma, the Anambra pupil, has dismissed allegations that she manipulated her 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) result.

Mmesoma, a student of Anglican Girls Secondary School in Nnewi, has been the subject of intense debate after she was celebrated as the highest scorer in this year’s UTME.

On Sunday, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) argued that the student was not the top scorer as claimed, adding that she got 249 and not 362 in the exam.

The board said the student allegedly manipulated her result to “deceive the public to fraudulently obtain a scholarship and other recognitions”.

JAMB also vowed to prosecute the student and others that allegedly manipulated their results in due course.

But speaking in a now-viral video, the student said she printed her result from the JAMB portal.

She also said the allegation has left her “‘traumatised,” adding that “I am not capable of forging my own result”.

“I am the owner of this result. I went to the JAMB portal to print this result and this is what they gave me. This is my aggregate, 362. This is exactly how I printed it out and downloaded it from the site,” she said.

“So, the fact that they are now saying I forged the result is what I don’t know. I am traumatised that they accused me of forging my own result. This is because I am not capable of forging my own result.

“This is the evidence. They said that I forged my result. They scanned this QR code then and it showed another name. A Yoruba name, Omotola Afolabi, 138. And that same person that scored 138, they checked again, and the person score 338. Meaning that there is a problem somewhere.

“And we went to the commissioner of education office last week Friday, with my principal and the educational secretary of Anglican Secondary school girls of Anglican Diocese. So, we went there and showed this result to the commissioner of education. She snapped it and sent it to the JAMB officials.

“They called back and said this is a forged result that I forged it myself. That the JAMB office does not have a record of this.

‘They now said that I forged it and called the DSS over. The DSS took us to their office and we made our statements there and said they will contact us later and that they are going to investigate this result to know where the source came from.

“So, instead of them to wait for the investigation to be over, they posted that I forged the result without confirming. I am really sad about it.

“Since my nursery school, I have been taking first. It is not that I am an illiterate girl to go and forge my result. Even in my common entrance exam, I scored three hundred and something.”

The Anambra state government had earlier constituted a panel to investigate the controversy surrounding the student’s result.