Mmesoma Ejike, the 19-year-old secondary school girl who entangled herself recently in Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination forgery, has surely got her share of Andy Warhol’s proverbial 15 minutes of fame. Unfortunately, she got it for the wrongest reason.
How a girl who is manifestly bright, going by both her actual JAMB score and her public delivery, would decide to walk the path she chose remains a big puzzle. She seemingly has the capacity to do well in JAMB and in life without cutting corners. She also has the confidence of her family and her school, from all indications. There is no pointer, too, that she is under any pressure from anywhere to deliver any class of result. So, what drove Mmesoma to the path of forgery? The article in this column last week was titled Lessons Nigeria teaches her children. The focus was not Mmesoma.
According to the Anambra State panel that investigated her, when she was asked what her motive was for forging the JAMB result, her terse answer was “nothing”. That raises a big question about her psychology, which may require further interrogation.
While it may be worthwhile to further explore Mmesoma’s mind and motive, there is little doubt that she has read much about, listened a lot to, seen a lot of, and followed the exploits of politicians in Nigeria in recent times. Indeed, the Nigerian politician must be her idol.
Sadly, she was not well prepared before she launched out to do as politicians do. Were she ready and entrenched like her politician-idols, she certainly will not go through the harrowing experience that has been her lot in the last fortnight. Were she as deft and rugged as her idols, she surely will take the forgery in her stride and move on, perhaps, to even higher heights. Just think about it.
If Mmesoma were to be a politician, first she would keep a straight face and declare her innocence. She did that at the outset, but later buckled, proving her amateurism. As a politician, she would have had many supporters who would contend, loudly, that with an authentic JAMB score of 249, Mmesoma has proved to be bright and capable enough, so what is the hoopla about forging result all about? What, they would ask, is the difference between 249 and 362, anyway? Yes, that’s the way it goes in politics.
Were she to be a politician, she would have acolytes who would argue with a straight face that Nigeria is not looking for geniuses but capable people and Mmesoma has already shown by her score of 249 that she is above average, so why is JAMB manifesting a pull-her-down syndrome? For good measure, there would also be researchers and journalists who would promptly excavate reference cases of exam malpractices and forgery in Nigeria and even abroad to show that such things do happen. The pitch would be that Mmesoma should not be crucified for what happens elsewhere; let bygones be bygones.
If Mmesoma were active on the political turf, she would likely have the open and tacit support of sundry professionals, among them professors, who would either defend her forged document or deftly diffuse serious attention to the subject. Some would throw up unrelated issues, seeking through such strategy to divert attention from what ought to be a scandal. She would also have enough religious leaders to pray for her. The religious leaders, so called, would piously remind the country that we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, so let the poor girl be. There would, of course, be enough patriots who would remind everybody that all that the country needed was peace to move forward, not the distraction of investigating a forged result.
Down the line, to finally put away the hoopla about forging a result, the ethnic card would be waved. Anyone insisting on making Mmesoma to answer for the wrong she did would be accused of going after her because she is of a different ethnic stock. That would be that. Mmesoma Ejikeme would thereafter go home triumphant and Nigeria would get her wish to move forward. Or backward, as the case may be.
But Mmesoma is not a politician. She does not have adequate chutzpah and machinery to ride the storm. If she were to be a politician, she would also have the capacity to engage JAMB in a prolonged legal wrestling match that would go all the way to the Supreme Court. By the time the apex court rules on the matter, it is either that the tenure of the JAMB registrar on seat when the case started has expired or the structure of JAMB itself would have changed.
It is, however, very remarkable that no major voice from Anambra State condoned the misdeed of the young girl. Former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, weighed in on the matter early and requested JAMB to properly investigate what transpired. The JAMB registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, said publicly that he spoke with Ezekwesili, obviously availing her of details of the matter. Thereafter, her disposition was for due process to prevail. Former Federal Road Safety Corps Marshal, Osita Chidoka, in whose examination centre Mmesoma sat for the JAMB exam, obviously established early that there was hanky-panky. He promptly called out the girl to own up to wrongdoing.
Chief Innocent Chukwuma, chairman of Innoson Motors, which had offered the girl a N3 million scholarship, based on the 362 JAMB score, asked for investigation, adding that, if the girl was innocent, the scholarship would subsist, if not, it would be withdrawn. Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s government in Anambra State instituted an investigative panel on the matter without delay. Once the panel established the forgery, the state government announced its findings. It commended JAMB for its transparent processes and indicted Mmesoma for wrongdoing. These were not the typical Nigerian mode of reaction to such issues. It speaks to the sense of propriety and value in that part on such matters.
It is not uncommon with such issues in our society for even prominent citizens to resort to speaking in tongues on one hand and on the other almost always ending up not calling a spade its name. Of course, there is a wide gap between the terrains of politics and that of the education sector where young citizens are still guided by regulations.
The Mmesoma JAMB result saga presents a real cause for concern, especially with the cynical manner she went about what she did. Was her action really her solo initiative, as she now says it was? To what purpose? Is Mmesoma daft or brazen? There is ample reason to worry about her. The information by JAMB that she is not the only culprit in the country involved in the act of producing home-made JAMB results is troubling. What will be the life trajectory of kids inclined this early to forgery? Well, maybe they will take to politics, where the sky beckons.
Since the governorship tenure of Peter Obi in Anambra, the state has established a glowing profile in education and national examinations, always taking the prime position or next to it. The standard has been sustained by subsequent administrations, to their respective credit. Thank God, while Mmesoma was seeking to enter heaven through the back door, the authentic highest score in the 2023 JAMB exam still emerged from Anambra. There is some consolation there.