Mmesoma Ejikeme, a 19-year-old student of Anglican Girls Secondary School, Nnewi, Anambra State, has been trending online for allegedly parading a fake Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) result.
Ejikeme had been parading herself as the top scorer of the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
She was initially celebrated for scoring 362 in the 2023 examination, a result that would make her the highest scorer, but the board has come out to say the result she parades is fake.
One key argument JAMB made was that the slip Ejikeme paraded was last used in 2021, and the QR code attached reveals a result belonging to one Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle with a 138 score.
Ejikeme, in a video obtained by DAILY GIST on Monday, maintained her innocence, noting that she was not capable of forging her result.
She said she had always been a brilliant pupil, who had secured first position from primary school days.
Mmesoma said she was invited to the police station where her statement was taken, and she was told that investigation was ongoing.
She said she felt traumatised by the incident, adding that, “there must be problem somewhere”.
However, the debate has raged on. JAMB who insisted that the result is fake said her result might have been the work of forgers who pull off pranks to show friends.
ANALYSIS
FIJ checked Google Playstore for applications that could help one manipulate UTME results and found one called ‘JambFun-Fake Jamb Result Maker’.
This app helps users create fake UTME results to “fool your friends!”
We downloaded this app and opened it to reveal a mock ‘JAMB 2022 UTME Results Notification’ slip.
It was observed that this slip matched the one paraded by Ejikeme. It is the same slip JAMB discontinued in 2021.
Afterwards, FIJ filled out the form with sample details to see if it would produce a result similar to the one paraded by Ejikeme. The finding was staggering.
This result confirmed that one could get a result identical to the one Ejikeme paraded, but did not confirm it was the same app she used to obtain hers.
With the result we forged via the app, FIJ, a candidate in an exam it did not sit for, scored 400 in UTME.
FIJ went further to scan the QR code, and what we found was more revealing.
The result of our scan showed “11231597AC :: Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle :: 138”, the same result we obtained when we scanned Ejikeme’s paraded result.
FIJ took notice of a tweet published by one Chijioke Chimeziri on Monday. Reacting to a video published by Ejikeme, in which she revealed that her QR code showed another candidate’s name, Chimeziri had attached another result allegedly belonging to Ejikeme, but with a different QR code claiming she scored 362.
We observed that the QR code on this result appeared superimposed on the result, as the code was on a bright shade of white, while the result was on a shade of green. It was doctored.
More claims arose by members of the public claiming people had suffered the same fate in the hands of JAMB in the past.
One Atung Gerald, a native of Kaura, Kaduna State, allegedly scored 380 in the UTME exam, but when we scanned the QR code attached to his peddled result, it read the same “11231597AC :: Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle :: 138”. All this points to one thing: the results came from one source with a unique code that returns “11231597AC :: Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle :: 138”. And the source? ‘JambFun-Fake Jamb Result Maker’.
FIJ went further to obtain two original results from applicants who wrote the 2023 UTME exam. When we scanned their results however, they returned a code that led nowhere. This simply means that codes attached to original 2023 UTME results can’t return scores via the common QR Code – Barcode Scanner.
As of press time, Ejikeme had not changed her stance. JAMB maintains a fraud was perpetrated, but it remains to be seen how the events unfold.
