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The recent spat between the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and a teenager, Miss Mmesoma Joy Ejikeme, raised some posers about our values as a people and as a nation. On the face of it, the matter looked simple. But the dimension it later took would make any discerning observer to wonder if there were more to it than what was in the public domain.
Initially, reports had it that Mmesoma was the highest scorer in the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). She attained this height by purportedly scoring 362 out of 400 marks. Nigerians hailed her for this feat. Her school, Anglican Girls Secondary School, Nnewi, in Anambra State, was also very proud of her for bringing honour to the school. To cap it all, Innoson Automobile Company gave her a N3million scholarship. This was soothing to this young lady who comes from a poor family. Her dad is said to be a motorcycle rider popularly called Okada.
However, there was a twist when JAMB announced another candidate, Miss Umeh, Kamsiyochukwu Nkechinyere, as the highest scorer this year. Kamsiyochukwu, a student of Deeper Life High School in Mowe, Ogun State, is also from Anambra State. She scored 360 to emerge tops in this year’s UTME. The Board accused Mmesoma of forging her result, withdrew the result and threatened to prosecute her. It said it stopped using the result notification slip format which Mmesoma relied upon to claim she got 362 since 2021. Rather than the 362 Mmesoma claimed she got and printed from the JAMB portal, the Board insisted she scored 249. “After all said and done,” Mmesoma later admitted, “I now saw that I got 249.” She said she should not be blamed for the mix-up.
It has become apparent that Mmesoma was misled. But, her case had thrown up all manner of conspiracy theories. It highlighted, once again, our fault lines and the penchant by some Nigerians to either support or condemn a perceived offender based on primordial sentiments. When this was going on, JAMB came up with a sledge hammer. It nullified Mmesoma’s result and banned her from taking its exams for three years.
No doubt, Mmesoma’s case is not the first and only one. The examination body had established a number of cases of this nature in the past. There is actually an app which some students reportedly use to falsify their results. It is possible that someone else committed this infraction on her behalf without her knowing exactly what transpired. This is why a thorough investigation is necessary. Meanwhile, the eight-man panel, made up of five professors and others, set up by the Anambra State Government to investigate the matter, has revealed that Mmesoma manipulated her JAMB’s result unaided. The panel recommended that Mmesoma should apologise to JAMB, her school and Anambra State Government, as well as undergo a psychological counselling and therapy.
Now that the matter has apparently been resolved, it is imperative to note that many Nigerians are in the habit of jumping into conclusions on matters they know little or nothing about. Oftentimes, people take sides out of sentiments or selfishness, thereby obfuscating truth and derailing the cause of justice. It happens in our political life as well. We had a general election on February 25, 2023. Governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections also held on March 18 this year. Some of the results of these elections were falsified such that election petition tribunals have been busy trying to sort out the wheat from the chaff of those results.
We cannot make progress as a nation when we continue to indulge in dishonest behaviour. We must eschew this habit of supporting corrupt practices when our kith and kin are involved. We must also not condemn simply because the culprit is not one of us. Unity will continue to elude us as a country if we continue this way. Crime is crime, no matter who and where it is committed.
While we congratulate the real highest scorer in this year’s UTME exam, we plead that JAMB should lift the three-year suspension it imposed on the young Mmesoma. She has a long way ahead of her and it will not be good to subject her to this trauma early in life.
We advise parents and guardians to take a closer look at what their children or wards do. Those who collude with some fraudsters to falsify the result of their children either in UTME or other exams should desist from such. Tackling corruption is not only at the government level. It starts from home and schools. Parents and teachers have enormous task to mould our children to be real leaders of tomorrow which we tout them to be.
