By Tiko Okoye

Quite early in the narrative, the saga of Mmesoma Ejikeme assumed the form of a violent storm interwoven with thunder and lightning as self-professing “Good Samaritans” rushed to free our modern-day Goldilocks from the savage vice-grip of a frightening and bullying JAMB bear.

‘Pro-bono’ lawyers made a song and dance about enmeshing the Joint Admissions Matriculations Board (JAMB) – organisers of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) – in lawsuits if it didn’t cease and desist forthwith from assassinating the character of the ‘harmless, poor girl.’ Scholarships were freely thrown at Mmesoma by men with deep pockets, ostensibly in honour of her trailblazing and pacesetting prowess.

The noisy pushback by crusaders of Mmesoma’s defiant efforts to go to the stake over her UTME result appeared to get more audacious and boisterous as JAMB desperately tried to initially use technology to expose gaping holes in her claims. Her promoters primed her to give an emotion-laden prime-time television interview aimed at highlighting JAMB’s ‘ethnic bias’ and ‘insincerity.’

A Facebook user claiming to be an eyewitness at the centre where Mmesoma sat for the UTME disclosed that her computer system developed glitches and stopped working. Someone went on air to offer the embattled girl a foreign scholarship after the initial donor of a N3million university scholarship started having second thoughts, even as many people continued to raucously hail and clap.

But somewhere down the road, things started turning curiouser and ugly, with Mmesoma finally confessing that she forged her 2023 UTME result. She and her family will forever rue why they allowed greed to get the better of them because her original score of 249 is good enough to fetch her admission in any Nigerian university of her choice, given JAMB’s cut-off score of 140. Mmesoma’s plight is a fitting reminder of 16th US President Abraham Lincoln’s admonition that “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.”

It occurred to me that if Mmesoma had committed suicide, as she confessed she was on the cusp of doing, her blood would’ve been on the heads of the mob who were way off base. We must remain grateful to the human rights activist – Harrison Gwamnishu (tellingly not a member of her own tribe) – she desperately reached out to for help.

And although her delusions of grandeur came crashing down when an official of the Anambra State Government matter-of-factly sought confirmation from JAMB, it cannot be gainsaid that JAMB’s effective use of technology served as the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

Prof. Oloyede’s managerial acumen, administrative profundity and unassailable integrity that have transformed JAMB from a cesspool of frauds to a well-oiled national examination body were sorely tested by the Mmesoma controversy. Here’s a government official who has been consistently refunding billions of naira to the federation account.

Recall that JAMB’s attempt to use technology to solve the Mmeoma riddle was greeted with howls of derision on social media platforms and sympathetic television houses. But in the end, JAMB effectively used the same technology to convince every doubting Thomas that Mmesoma was older (19) than what she claimed her age to be (16); that in an attempt to mask her fraud she used the name of a CBT centre no longer in existence; and that she superimposed her inflated subject scores on the 2022 UTME result slip rather the 2023 version that had been reconfigured.

There were so many red flags and this saga would’ve become dead-on-arrival like several others, if political and ethnic local champions and portmanteau ‘girl rights activists’ hadn’t allowed their base motives to overwhelm their sense of balance and conscientiousness. For whatever it was worth, Osita Chidoka, former FRSC Corps Marshall, ex-Minister of Aviation and proprietor of the CBT centre where Mmesoma supposedly sat for the UTME dismissed her score and underlining story as fake news, even as he appealed to her to “come clean.” But he might as well have been addressing a deaf and dumb convention.

It is true that the manner other ethnic nationalities used the Mmesoma controversy to diss the entire Igbo nation, but we have no one but ourselves to blame for this monstrous stereotyping considering the way our social media gladiators recklessly went to war in Mmesoma’s defence. An African adage that a property owner should blem no else after the firewood he carried to his own house starts transforming it into a meeting place for lizards.

Why nary a word from the lawyer who had bragged about making legal mincemeat of JAMB in court? Where are those who sought to chase clout by publicising their determination to offer Mmesoma full scholarships now that the authentic highest scorer has been announced (Nkechinyere Umeh), who incidentally comes from the same Anambra State? Why no rush to similarly smother her with scholarships if their intentions were altruistic?

That the whole saga was also perceived through politically-tinted lenses of ‘Us versus Them’ can be seen from all the related imageries and central theme of ‘Whataboutism’ – defined as the technique or practice of responding to an allegation or thorny question by making a counter-allegation or raising a different issue. That the Mmesoma episode appeared to be an exercise in whataboutism can be gleaned from the fact that most of her supporters and fans were ‘marrying’ her case with that of President Bola Tinubu currently playing out at the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal/Court of Appeal.

They were so taken in by their sanctimoniousness that they failed to identify the embedded contradiction of asking the general public to patiently await the findings of independent investigative panels prior to making a decision on the case of the beleaguered Mmesoma, even as they rushed to scream “Guilty as charged!” at Tinubu without so much as one valid decision by any court of competent jurisdiction!

The reference to glitches supposedly experienced by Mmesoma’s computer was just a not-too-subtle satirical dig at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that keeps saying that it couldn’t honour its pledge to upload results directly to its IReV because the portal suffered a glitch during the presidential election.

Still, it must be said that just as calves learn to chew cud by watching mother-cows, the youths are seeing how grown-up leaders and officials are committing all manner of crimes with little or no repercussion and they grow up believing that it simply boils down to being able to beat the system. They also deduce, rightly or wrongly, that with the adults in a compromised position and unfit to be good role models, they cannot be judged by society, as it becomes a case of “Let him that’s without sin cast the first stone.”

The initial strident pushback at JAMB is unquestionably attributable to a total lack of public trust in government institutions and agencies. Unfortunately, this is a virus that’s afflicting virtually every part of the world but that doesn’t mean that the rot should be left unchecked in Nigeria. If the Tinubu administration aims to really deliver on its pledge to deepen the nation’s democratic process then it must add the building of strong institutions to its work order.

We must now begin to hold the feet of our appointed and elected leaders very close to the fire to enhance accountability and transparency, not by querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller criticisms but, as American essayist and philosopher advocated, “by guiding, instructive, inspiring criticisms.”

It is only then the society will start correctly repositioning its value system, knowing, for instance, that, while the behaviour of an Mmesoma may be construed to be trivial in many quarters, it is nevertheless a constituent part of the little foxes that spoil the vines bearing tender grapes. Both small and big sins should spark public rage whenever committed as they are equally inimical to sustainable development and progress.

Many have come to perceive Mmesoma a hardened street-smart youth who not only had the pluck to take her case directly to her school principal and the Anambra Commissioner for Education – and JAMB itself! They feel ashamed to confess that she completely fooled them with feigned innocence and a disarming mien. Still, my gut feeling tells me that she couldn’t have perpetuated the crime on her own, given her very humble background.

I also believe that her case is simply emblematic of the ocean of rot this country is wallowing in. That’s why the decision by the Anambra State Government to be responsible for her psychological evaluation and treatment is very commendable. Mmesoma needs our empathy much more than our vilification.

But doing so must come at a price. She must be ready to disclose the address of the cybercafe where the forgery was committed as well as the identity of the primary hacker who superintended the job and all those who chaperoned her television interviews.

Tiko Okoye is a Public affairs commentator
08054103468 (SMS only)