On Wednesday, 15th May, 2024, the House of Representatives considered the report of the ad-hoc committee and made far-reaching recommendations.
The public will recall the much-publicised case of Miss Ejikeme Mmesoma, who fraudulently altered her 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) score from 249 to 362 in order to give credence to her false claim of having the highest overall score in the 2023 UTME in Nigeria.
What she did was to simply superimpose her dream score, which had no relation to what was actually in the records of the Board. Furthermore, a petition was forwarded on her behalf to the House of Representatives which consequently constituted an ad-hoc committee to investigate the matter and subsequently made seven recommendations to the effect.
That: i. Miss Mmesoma Joy Ejikeme should cooperate with JAMB to ensure that all those who conspired with her are identified; ii. Members of the public should always verify results through the issuing authorities when in doubt of what is presented to them by candidates seeking patronage of any kind; iii. JAMB should be commended for its watertight examination processes and procedures, transparency, innovations and record-keeping system, all of which made it possible to retrieve unmutilated records of interactions with candidates at short notice; iv. The system adopted by JAMB through which candidates do not present their results directly to their chosen institutions but had to rely on the results JAMB had earlier sent to their chosen institutions, is commendable and should be emulated by employers of labour to reduce falsification of results; v. JAMB should reconsider the three-year ban placed on Miss Ejekeme Joy Mmesoma considering the possible negative impact the ban may have on her career and future prospects given the fact that she is a first offender and had been remorseful; vi. JAMB should engage the public more through enhanced awareness and sensitization programmes so as to educate members of the public on its procedures and activities. In this regard, the committee finds it very assuring that the Board’s high ethical standards had helped to clear any perceived negative perception about the institution; and vii. The House of Representatives should support and strengthen such institutions like JAMB through enhanced budgetary allocations in order to improve their capacity to continue to provide quality services to Nigerians.
The Board welcomes the diligent investigation by the House of Representatives as it considers the recommendations by the committee as the right step going forward. It also assures the National Assembly and the general public that it will continue to put in its best to ensure that its processes guarantee fairness and equity without fear or favour.
On the earnest desire of the House to offer needed support, the Board requests that six (6) Professional Test Centres per annum be constructed by the Federal Ministry of Education and handed over to JAMB in order not to divert the Board’s attention from its core purpose to contract monitoring. This will go a long way towards increasing the number of CBT centres across the country thereby making its services more readily available to candidates in different parts of the county especially in the rural areas
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