By Adesina Soyooye
A former Aviation Minister, Osita Chidoka, has said he knew the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board Examination results being flaunted by 16- year old Mmesoma Ejikeme was fake.
The Examination Body and Ejikeme, a student of Anglican Girls Secondary School, Nnewi, Anambra State, and JAMB have been in a tango over her claim that she scored 362 in the just released result, and, therefore, is the highest scorer in the Examination.
JAMB swiftly countered her claim, and dismissed the score as fake and a product of forgery. Her correct score, the Board revealed, is 249. It accused Ejikeme of criminally inflating her result in order to attract unmerited favours from her State Government and kind-hearted individuals.
The situation exploded into a big controversy with reactions which, almost, had ethnic colouration, coming in like claps of thunder.
Instructively, the real highest score was by Miss Nkechinyere Umeh, also from Anambra State.
Chidoka, also, a former Corp Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Commission, in a statement he issued on Wednesday, said for him, the red flags started flying as soon as he saw the result slip being flaunted by Miss Ejikeme.
Here’s why Chidoka should know: Ejikeme took the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, at a CBT Centre owned by his Foundation. Everything on her result slip, Chidoka said, was different from everybody’s own.
Chidoka condemned the ethnic bent being attributed in some quaters to the Ejikeme saga, and commended JAMB for vigorously and robustly defending its integrity and that of the Examination it conducted. He asked Miss Ejikeme to come clean. If she does, Chidoka said he would be one of those to appeal to JAMB to temper justice with mercy, considering her age.
Following is the text of the former Minister’s statement.
“Miss Mmesoma Ejikeme took her 2023 JAMB at my Foundation’s Computer-Based Teaching Centre at Obosi. I got some calls from worried friends about Mmesoma’s result which had Thomas Chidoka Centre as her Examination Centre. I allayed their fears that the result issue had nothing to do with the Examination Centre.
“I observed two significant red flags as soon as I saw her result online. First, our Centre is no longer addressed as Thomas Chidoka Centre for Human Development on the JAMB portal since 2021.
“The correct name on the JAMB portal and main Examination Slip is Nkemefuna Foundation (Thomas Chidoka Centre for Human Development). Due to the difference in our CAC registration details, JAMB insisted that we change to Nkemefuna Foundation with Thomas Chidoka in a bracket as an identifier. We implemented the name change in 2021.
“Her result showing Thomas Chidoka without the Nkemefuna Foundation, which was on her main Examination Slip, raised my suspicion about the genuineness of the result.
“The second red flag was the result template. A cursory review of some of those who took the last examination at our Centre showed a different result slip template with the candidate’s passport picture, JAMB watermarks, and no mention of the Examination Centre. I gave the young Mmesoma the benefit of the doubt and wanted to see if she would explain how she got the result, which is obviously, not the result template that JAMB used in 2023. I knew it was fake.
“I doff my hat for JAMB. They came out forcefully and defended their integrity vigorously. They shared the USSD communication between Mmesoma’s phone and their servers with timestamps. Mr Fabian Benjamin, the JAMB spokesperson did a yeoman’s job in explaining how their system works, and the security of their portal.
“He even asked anyone who cares, to crosscheck with AIRTEL, the network provider of Mmesoma’s phone. Their transparency was compelling and disarming.
“The JAMB Registrar, Prof. Isham Oloyede, issued statements based on facts, and defended the integrity of a foremost Nigerian institution whose failure would have had a catastrophic effect on Nigeria’s educational and CBT systems.”
Chidoka revealed that his relationship with JAMB dates back to 2021. He said: “As a Corp Marshal in 2011, I used JAMB to conduct the FRSC recruitment exercise that is still adjudged a high-water in public sector recruitment. Those recruited through that process wear their uniform with pride and continue to deliver to the organisation to this day.
“For me, the real issue in this saga is the level of distrust of our national institutions. The social media frenzy and denigration of JAMB, together with the ethnic slang of a simple issue with clear and verifiable methods of resolution is symptomatic of the deep distrust of our national institutions.
“This distrust was deepened in the past eight years with a horrifying descent of issues to our national fault lines. The ethnicisation of the issue is sad and disappointing.”
Finally, Chidoka had a word for the teenager in the middle of the saga: “Come clean. If she does that, I will lend my voice to beg JAMB to note her age and show more leniency.”
JAMB has, since, cancelled and withdrawn Miss Ejikeme’s result. It has, also, banned her from participating in any of the Board’s Examination for three years.
