FACT-CHECK: How Mmesoma Ejikeme’s fake JAMB UTME result came about

Mmesoma Ejikeme, a 19-year-old student, has come under fire for allegedly parading a fake Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) result.

Ejikeme was initially celebrated for scoring 362 in the 2023 examination, a result that would make her the highest scorer, but the board has come out to say the result she parades is false.

One key argument JAMB made was that the slip Ejikeme paraded was last used in 2021, and the QR code attached reveals a result belonging to one Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle with a 138 score.

Ejikeme, in a video released on Monday, maintained her innocence, but the debate has raged on. JAMB said her result might have been the work of forgers who pull off pranks to show friends, so FIJ looked into this claim.

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OUR ANALYSIS

FIJ checked Google Playstore for applications that could help one manipulate UTME results and found one called ‘JambFun-Fake Jamb Result Maker’.

JambFun-Fake Jamb Result Maker

This app helps users create fake UTME results to “fool your friends!”

We downloaded this app and opened it to reveal a mock ‘JAMB 2022 UTME Results Notification’ slip.

We observed that this slip matched the one paraded by Ejikeme. It is the same slip JAMB discontinued in 2021.

What we did afterwards was fill out the form with sample details to see if it would produce a result similar to the one paraded by Ejikeme. Our finding was staggering.

This result confirmed that one could get a result identical to the one Ejikeme paraded, but did not confirm it was the same app she used to obtain hers.

With the result we forged via the app, FIJ, a candidate in an exam it did not sit for, scored 400 in UTME.

We then went further to scan the QR code, and what we found was more revealing.

The result of our scan showed “11231597AC :: Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle :: 138”, the same result we obtained when we scanned Ejikeme’s paraded result.

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FIJ took notice of a tweet published by one Chijioke Chimeziri on Monday. Reacting to a video published by Ejikeme, in which she revealed that her QR code showed another candidate’s name, Chimeziri had attached another result allegedly belonging to Ejikeme, but with a different QR code claiming she scored 362.

We observed that the QR code on this result appeared superimposed on the result, as the code was on a bright shade of white, while the result was on a shade of green. It was doctored.

More claims arose by members of the public claiming people had suffered the same fate in the hands of JAMB in the past.

One Atung Gerald, a native of Kaura, Kaduna State, allegedly scored 380 in the UTME exam, but when we scanned the QR code attached to his peddled result, it read the same “11231597AC :: Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle :: 138”. All this points to one thing: the results came from one source with a unique code that returns “11231597AC:: Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle :: 138”. And the source? ‘JambFun-Fake Jamb Result Maker’.

FIJ went further to obtain two original results from applicants who wrote the 2023 UTME exam. When we scanned their results however, they returned a code that led nowhere. This simply means that codes attached to original 2023 UTME results can’t return scores via the common QR Code – Barcode Scanner.

Our scan done on an original result

As of press time, Ejikeme had not changed her stance. JAMB maintains a fraud was perpetrated, but it remains to be seen how the events unfold.

Culled from – Foundation For Investigative Journalism

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