The 19-year-old Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) candidate, Mmesoma Ejikeme, accused by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) of result forgery, has apologised.
The student of Anglican Girls Secondary School, Nnewi in Anambra State, had claimed she scored 362 marks as against the 249 marks her JAMB records of 2023 UTME showed.
She read an apology letter at an investigative hearing by the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee.
Present at the hearing was the JAMB Registrar, Prof Isiaka Oloyede.
Ejikeme pleaded for leniency and promised it would not happen again.
She said she had never been involved in examination malpractice all her life.
Mmesoma, who was at the hearing in the company of her lawyer and family, promised to be a better person.
She begged that justice be tampered with mercy concerning the three-year ban imposed on her.
Reading from the letter that she presented to the Committee, she said: “Permit me to use this medium to tender this letter of apology with a heavy heart.
“I deeply and sincerely admit that I ignorantly got my JAMB result from another portal that was not a JAMB portal.
“But in the course of this, I lambasted JAMB solidly standing my ground that I obtained my result from the JAMB portal.
“I apologise for all the apportioned blame and all the pain I have caused.
“I want to emphasise that ignorance played a significant role in my misguided action. I learnt a clear understanding of the far-reaching consequences and the impact of my actions would have.
“Words cannot adequately describe the depths of pain I feel for letting you down.
“This is the first time in my life in my academic studies that I would be accused of any form of misbehaviour, not to talk of forgery.
“It is not in my character and personality, therefore I plead for leniency and forgiveness for my misconduct. I want to emphasize my commitment to making amends.”
Oloyede said it was impossible to get into JAMB’s system.
He said the system had never been compromised since he assumed office six and a half years ago.
“We do not apply cloud storage at all. Our results are not on any cloud storage. Our systems are foolproof. Nobody has ever been able to penetrate our systems. It takes a lot of experts and money to achieve this,” he said.
He said JAMB had 19 pieces of evidence that proved that Mmesoma lied about her result.
Part of such evidence, he said was Mmesoma’s QR code which was for a student who sat for the exam in 2021 in Osun State
The Registrar said she faked and superimposed her result on the result of the girl from Osun.
He also said she likely gave her password to somebody else because her account was accessed from eight different Computer Based Test Centers in the country.
He said the Centres were under investigation, adding the Centre where she registered had been suspended.
Prof Oloyede said 109 persons committed similar offences across the country.
According to him, in Akure, four persons have been remanded for similar offences by the state High Court.
He said JAMB was aware of an app to generate fake results and is investigating it.
The committee, chaired by Sada Soli, had agreed not to subject Mmesoma to public testimony but reversed its decision upon discovering that she was 19.
While commending the young lady, her father and her lawyers for showing up at the hearing, the committee, however, advised her to learn from her mistakes.
The Nation
