The House of Representatives, yesterday, asked the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, to lift the three-year ban on Miss Ejikeme Mmesoma, a candidate of the 2023 Unified Tartary Matriculation Examination, UTME, for alleged manipulation of her result.
It also, at plenary, set up an ad hoc committee, chaired by Sada Soli, to investigate the allegations of manipulations and falsification of results.
The House equally resolved to probe JAMB facilities, with a view to averting an occurrence of such a situation in the future, and called for independent examiners to examine the candidate’s scripts to determine her actual score in the UTME.
The committee is also to look into the issue of special centres for examinations in the country.
Consequently, the House asked JAMB to halt further action on the issue, pending the conclusion and outcome of the investigation.
Vanguard reports that the resolutions came on the heels of a motion, captioned: ‘Call to Investigate Alleged Manipulation of Unified Tartary Matriculation Examination, UTME, by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, by Miss Ejikeme’, presented at the plenary by Awaji-Inombek D. Abiante.
Presenting the motion, Abiante noted that JAMB was primarily charged with the general control of the conduct of matriculation examinations for admissions into universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in Nigeria, calling for an investigation.
He said: “Miss Ejikeme Mmesoma of Anglican Girls Secondary School, Nnewi, Anambra State, sat for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations and scored 362.
”On 2 July 2023 JAMB, Head of Public Affairs and Protocol, Dr Fabian Benjamin made a public pronouncement accusing Miss Ejikeme Mmesoma of manipulating her UTME results that she actually scored 249 instead of the 362 as claimed.
“Miss. Ejikeme Mmesoma came out to defend herself, that she actually printed the result from the JAMB Buncharitable and had been a brilliant child all through her nursery and tertiary education, coming first in all the examinations she had been taken before the UTME, hence she posited that she is not capable of manipulating her UTME result.