The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board said it is investigating 11 candidates in the 2021/2022 Unified Tertiary and Matriculation Examination for allegedly tampering with their results.
JAMB’s Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, who briefed journalists at JAMB’s headquarters in Abuja on Friday on the development, said exam body also handed over a 19-year-old candidate, Chinedu John, to the police over alleged result tampering.
According to Oloyede, John claimed he scored 380 in the examination conducted in June and was surprised to receive 265 from the board after the results were released.
He said following the alleged “alteration” of the UTME score, the candidate’s father, John Ifenkpam, approached an Enugu-based lawyer, Ikeazor Akaiwe, who wrote to JAMB for another opportunity for the boy to retake the examination and demanded N1bn as damages to cover for the physical and emotional trauma the boy had been through from being offered “two separate scores.”
According to Oloyede, the candidate claimed that his UTME scores from 2019 till 2021 were “altered” by the board, thereby denying him the opportunity to study his desired course – medicine.
On Friday, the candidate, his father and lawyers travelled to Abuja from Enugu State following an invitation from JAMB management.
The JAMB Registrar said, “Initially, the boy was given few minutes to come clean in a closed session with his father and lawyers about the results he was parading but he insisted that his original score from the examination was 380.
“After going back and forth, the board tendered evidence to counter the claim of John and his legal representatives.
“At the Friday meeting, documentary evidence tendered by the board showed that John scored 265 and not the 380 he had claimed.”
Oloyede accused the candidate of alteration, adding that he would be handed over to the police for investigation and subsequently prosecuted..
The registrar said John was among 11 eleven candidates that JAMB had pencilled down for prosecution for alleged results forgery.
Oloyede said, “We have 11 of them who tampered with their results. Two of them are already being prosecuted. The remaining ones, we are going to withdraw their results and prosecute them. The main purpose is to sanitise the system, including our staff.
“There was never any communication of 380 with this boy. Because this boy has accused JAMB, we are going to withhold his result until the investigation is concluded. We are going to request that our interactions with him be subjected to the public.”
His lawyer, Ikeazor, appealed to the board to instead give room for further investigation.
“I will not stand against an investigation. Let there be an investigation but what I will not agree to is to prejudge him,” he said..
Earlier, John had said, “The result I have been receiving is not the result I am entitled to. I wrote the first JAMB in 2019.
“The first time, they sent 328 and later, I saw 278 when I checked it. I printed it. I couldn’t meet up for admission that year. I wanted to study Medicine and Surgery at the University of Ibadan.
“In 2020, the same thing happened. I scored 343, but by the time I went to the portal to print, I saw 306. I used the 306 and it gave me admission to UI. But because I didn’t have Further Mathematics, I had to forfeit it.
“I decided to leave Medicine and Surgery for them in 2021, so I picked Petroleum Engineering. In 2021, JAMB issued me two results. I saw 380 the first time I checked and then the second time, I saw 265.”
But the board’s Public Relations Officer, Fabian Benjamin, claimed that the candidate confessed to the crime.
He said, “The candidate who was paraded for forging the board’s result has confessed after the board discovered that he saved his sister’s number on his phone as 55019 and used the phone to send the fake result to his phone.
“When he sends such results, they come as 55019.
“He pleaded for mercy that he had to do that when the result he got was not up to what could give him his desired programme.”
About Author
Leave a Reply